Requiem
by Quentin2
Summary: The team travels to New York to investigate a kidnapping that dredges up uncomfortable memories for Reid. Primarily a casefic, shades of angst. COMPLETE
1. Introit

_**Disclaimer and a few notae benes:**_

_First and foremost, I don't own Criminal Minds. Nor do I own the New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, the Hilton New York or any of the other actual places that are mentioned in this story. I've utilized actual NFL team names and locations because frankly, I'm really bad at coming up with new names for teams, so it was easier just to use the actual names of teams. The characters associated with any football franchises are purely fictional and used that way. They are NOT supposed to represent anyone real. Any actual game results are also fictional and are not symbolic of any games that have actually been played. _

_That being said, this is my first Criminal Minds fic. I hope you enjoy and I promise that Reid will figure more prominently in future chapters. :)_

_**CHAPTER ONE**_

The insistent ringing of a doorbell woke Jerry Wallace, the owner of the New England Patriots, deep in the night. At first, he thought the sound was coming from his Blackberry and he reached for it, nonplussed when he found its screen black.

"I think it's the door," his wife murmured and he rolled out of bed, his mind still cloudy with sleep.

He opened the door to find himself face-to-face with a courier. "Can I help you?" he managed to mumble.

"This was overnighted from New York, sir. I was told to deliver it only to you as soon as it arrived." The courier handed a manila envelop to Wallace. "It's an emergency."

Blearily, Wallace signed for the envelope. He set it on his kitchen counter and returned upstairs. He had half a dozen staff members in New York this weekend, the Patriots' contingent for the NFL draft. No doubt something had come up during the night and Paul, the team's GM, was panicking. Draft weekend left everyone on edge and something that might have seemed manageable any other time of the year suddenly became a catastrophe.

Wallace, like every team official associated with the draft both here in Boston and in New York, had been up late, waiting for the completion of the second round. At four in the morning, he didn't want to think about football or anything else. He just wanted to sleep. He yawned, crawled into bed and promptly forgot all about the envelope waiting for him in the kitchen.

* * *

Danielle shook Elliot awake and stood over him, arms crossed over her chest. "There's some courier at the door, Elliot," she said. "He said he's from New York, but he can only give it to you."

Elliot blinked and shook his head. "What? What time is it?"

"It's like four in the morning. Who the hell delivers letters at four o'clock in the morning?"

Elliot rolled out bed and pulled on a sweatshirt. "It's from New York?"

"Yeah."

He shrugged. "It's probably something with the draft. If Paul's anything like Mike, he has no idea that sending information about the draft in the middle of the night is inappropriate." He tried to sound nonchalant, but he wasn't. Even though Paul was a fairly new GM, Elliot knew him well enough to know that Paul wouldn't courier anything to him at four in the morning. Moreover, in his six years with the Patriots, Elliot had never once been involved with the draft when the draft took place. Sure, Mike and Jerry consulted him, asked him what he was looking for in next season's team, but when it actually came to the draft, he just sat at home and watched. This wasn't about the draft, he could sense it.

He signed for the parcel, nothing more than a standard manila envelope with his name written across it in all caps with a sharpie. He frowned and opened it. Inside was a black and white photo of a woman, tied to a chair, her mouth gagged. A hand gripped her hair, forcing her face up, so it could be seen by the camera. Along the bottom was written HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT HER?, this time in red sharpie.

Elliot dropped the picture to the floor, feeling nauseous. It was Lena.

* * *

J.J. arrived in the conference room to find the rest of the team waiting for her, sipping coffee and discussing their weekends with one another. She threw her file folder on the table.

"Listen up, guys, we're going to have to get moving ASAP," she said. She held up a studio portrait of a woman in her late twenties with dark hair and dark eyes. "Lena Lopez was reported missing from her New York hotel room last night." She handed the photo to Morgan, who was sitting next to her.

"Wait, Lena Lopez? Doesn't she work for the New England Patriots?" Morgan asked, frowning at the photo. "I've got a couple friends up in Boston. She's pretty popular up there."

J.J. nodded. "She's the Patriots' head of media relations and she's pretty well known in football circles, which is one of the reasons the NYPD called us."

Rossi leaned back in his chair. "And what's the other reason?" he asked.

"Reasons," J.J. said. She pulled another picture from her file. "This is one. This picture was delivered by courier to the Patriots quarterback Elliot Mann on Sunday morning around four. A similar photo was delivered to the team's owner, Jerry Wallace, although he didn't open it until later that morning. This she also passed to Morgan.

Hotch nodded to the photo. "No one's received a ransom note yet, but clearly the unsub wants the team to be aware of what's happening. He didn't want to wait until someone stumbled on the disappearance."

Reid reached for the photo and opened his mouth, but paused. The picture brought back icky, uncomfortable memories that he had been spending a few years now trying to process. The frantic way they came flushing back, breaking through the block he had built in his mind to dam them up, left him unsettled, disoriented. He handed the photo to Rossi.

"He seems to be taunting. He already knows that the people who received these letters are at his mercy, they can't help Lena until he gives them a method of helping her. Yet he asks them how far they're willing to go to help her, as if they have to prove themselves," Hotch said, glancing at Reid.

"The wording is sexual," Rossi murmured. "He writes 'how much do you want _her_' not something like 'how much do you want to save her.' This is about sex for him."

"Guys, there's something else," J.J. said. Six heads turned to face her again. "The NYPD think she was missing for over twenty-four hours when the disappearance was reported."

"What?" Prentiss sat bolt upright in her seat. "They didn't report it for a whole day? What the hell were they doing?"

"Lena disappeared in the middle of the NFL draft," J.J. said. "Apparently, the team didn't want the media to know about the disappearance until after the draft."

"So they didn't even contact the police?"

Hotch shook his head. "We need to get to New York as soon as possible. J.J and…Reid, I'd like you two to go to Boston and meet with the team, get a feel for the victim's personality. Why she was chosen. And J.J., since the victim was in charge of PR, the team will probably be scrambling, trying to deal with the press. Give them a hand."

"Definitely. I think everyone will want to keep this as quiet as possible for as long as possible."

Hotch surveyed the team. "I don't need to tell you that we're working against the clock here. We leave as soon as possible."

In silence, the team filed out to prepare for their departure, leaving Hotch and Reid in the room alone. Reid had reached across the table for the studio portrait that J.J. had passed around the table when she introduced the case. "She looks so sad," he said more to himself than Hotch.

"Are you going to be alright?" Hotch asked, sitting down next to Reid.

Reid didn't meet Hotch's gaze, but considered Lena's picture. "It's been around thirty, thirty-three hours since she disappeared. If we don't find her in the next fifteen hours, we probably won't find her alive."

"I know. That's why I want you to go to Boston. We need to know why the unsub targeted her."

Reid shook his head and didn't take his eyes from the picture. "This isn't going to end well. He's going to torture her, probably rape her and when we get too close…"

"We'll just have to stop him first." Hotch stood to leave, but turned in the doorway. "If you want to sit this one out, just say the word."

"I know what she's going through."

"You do."

Hotch hid a small smile as Reid stood up. "I guess I've got to get ready," he said, dropping the picture on the table.

"I guess so. See you on the plane."

"Yeah."

* * *

Two NYPD detectives met the BAU team on the tarmac at JFK. The lead detective looked as though he himself might have participated in the NFL draft a decade ago: he had the basic dimensions and gravity of a redwood trunk. Detective Ortega, as he introduced himself, towered over even Morgan and Hotch, and looked undeniably uncomfortable in his suit.

"We left the hotel room exactly the way we found it," Ortega said, leading the agents to a pair of idling SUVs. "I figured you guys would want to see it." He spoke with a strong Brooklyn accent.

Hotch nodded. "I'm going to send Agents Morgan and Rossi here to the hotel. I'd like your detectives to brief Agent Prentiss and myself so we know what your investigation has uncovered thus far."

Ortega sighed. "There's not much. In fact, we're eager for your input."

"That's a first," Prentiss whispered to Morgan.

The other detective, who had been hanging back near the cars, spoke for the first time. "The team has been pressuring us for results, but they haven't been particularly forthcoming," he said.

"My partner, Drew Hoffman," Ortega said. "And he's right. We've asked all the members of the team who were here this weekend to remain here, and they have, but grudgingly."

"I've heard that the Patriots are much for sharing," Morgan said.

"And without Lopez, they're not as savvy about sharing as they would be normally," Hoffman added. "Hopefully your presence will help convey how desperate the situation is.

The agents separated, Morgan and Rossi climbing into Ortega's SUV, headed for the Hilton New York, on the Avenue of the Americas, while Hotch and Prentiss drove with Hoffman to the Midtown North Precinct headquarters on 54th.

"The Hilton New York is a nice hotel," Rossi remarked. "I'm sure they have state-of-the-art surveillance cameras."

"I'll get Garcia on it," Morgan replied, dialing the tech wizard's number as he spoke.

"You said that there was no forced entry to the hotel room," Rossi continued, turning to Ortega. "How easy would it be to get a key to a guest's room?"

Ortega shrugged. "It's hard to say. The hotel claims their security is first rate. And after nine-eleven, it probably is. But that doesn't mean that our suspect didn't waltz right up to the front desk and ask for a key to her room, claiming to be a member of her staff."

"That'd be pretty risky," Morgan said, ending his call with Garcia. "There's always the chance that someone on the hotel staff could ID him. But on the other hand, we know he like to taunt us – the pictures he sent to Wallace and Mann prove that."

Rossi pursed his lips in thought. "We're making a huge assumption here."

"What's that?" Ortega asked.

"How did he know what room she was it? I don't think even the most naïve of concierge workers would make the mistake of giving that information out."

"Which means that he was following her before he abducted her – this wasn't random," Rossi said.

"Or," Morgan mused, "someone who knew where she was staying told the unsub which room she was in. And if that's the case, there's a very good chance that he's working with someone on the team."

Ortega pulled into the circular entrance to the Hilton New York. "Lopez's room is up on the twenty-ninth floor. I'll meet you up there. I need to check in with my lieutenant really quick. There's a couple uniforms up there right now, they'll let you in."

In the elevator, Rossi dialed J.J. "Are you two in any position to talk to the team staff?" he asked when J.J. answered

"I'm on my way to the franchise offices right now," J.J. replied.

"Where's Reid?"

"He went over to the victim's house. He wanted to get started on victimology right away."

"Listen, J.J., I need you to find out if there's anyone who worked with Lena who might have been unhappy with her or carried a grudge against her. Also, see if there's anyone above her who might have disapproved of how she did her job."

"Am I looking for anything in particular?"

"There's a chance that someone on the team might have told the unsub where Lena was staying and/or procured an extra key to her room for him." Rossi hung up as the doors of the elevator slid open on the plush refinement of the twenty-ninth floor. A uniformed officer was standing in the lobby. He held out a hand to bar Rossi and Morgan from continuing down the hall.

"I'm sorry, this floor has been evacuated by the NYPD, I'll have to ask you to go back downstairs."

Rossi and Morgan flashed their IDs. "We're from the BAU unit of the FBI. We were brought on the case to build a psychological profile of the suspect."

The office nodded. "The room is right down this way." He led them down the hall. "Sorry about that, guys. We're really trying to keep the lid on this. As soon as the press gets wind of what's going on, this place is going to be crawling with reporters."

"Understandable," Rossi said. "This is pretty big news, then?"

"The Patriots aren't well liked around here. I hate to say it, but a lot of people are going to say that they deserved something like this happening."

"Even after they lost the Super Bowl?" Morgan asked. "I would have though that would be more than enough."

The officer shrugged. "What can I say? Rivalries run deep around here. This is her room."

The BAU agents stepped into a fairly well appointed room, large by Midtown Manhattan standards. Both of the beds were still made, but the comforter on the bed closest to the door was wrinkled, as if someone had laid down on it. A shoulder bag had been dropped on the floor, near the entrance and some of its contents had spilled out. Morgan and Rossi stepped into the room and accepted the latex gloves another officer handed them. A trail of clothing led towards the bathroom, in stark contrast to the suits hanging in the closet.

"Nothing's been moved?" Rossi clarified.

"Nothing, sir. As soon as we heard that the FBI would take the case, we didn't let anyone but Detectives Ortega and Hoffman and the CSIs in."

Morgan bent down to examine the contents of the bag. He held up a Blackberry. "This thing's dead. Is there a charger around here? Maybe we can plug it in and see what kind of calls she's been getting."

"No overt signs of struggle." Rossi continued to wander around the room, and peeked into the bathroom. "She seems pretty organized. Her toiletries are all ordered in here – toothbrush and toothpaste in a cup, makeup all packed into a purse… Nothing's spread out or out of place. Same thing with her clothes. It's all either hung up or ordered in her suitcase. There's nothing out of place." He turned and pointed to the clothes that had been scattered across the carpet. "Nothing, that is, except these."

Morgan rocked back on his haunches. "Same here. She's got volumes of notes about potential draft picks and free agents, but they're almost obsessively organized by round. What do you think, OCD?"

"Not necessarily OCD, but she definitely likes order, which is why this is so weird. Why wouldn't she hang up these clothes?"

Morgan stood up and returned to the doorway. "She comes in, drops her bag on the floor." He mimed the action. "Then she crosses the room, starts changing. She can't be bothered to hang up her clothes. She pulls something out of the suitcase to change, then…what?"

"She lies down on the bed," Rossi said, nodding at the wrinkled bedspread. "But she doesn't get under the covers." He cocked his head, noticing a tumbler on the bedside table. He picked it up and sniffed it. "Liquor."

"She was drinking? Was she drunk? Is that why she didn't struggle?"

Rossi tapped a finger against the glass. "What if she wasn't drunk, she was drugged?"

"What, like someone slipped her a roofie or something?"

Rossi nodded. "Yeah, I think that's exactly what happened."

* * *

Lena blinked and opened her eyes slightly. Her head was pounding, her eyes dry from sleeping in her contacts. The racing of her heart had woken her and she knew she had been dreaming again. Her mind was hazy but she tried to shuffle the cobwebs to remember. Not that it mattered. So many were about him

_Aiden, _she thought. She could barely picture his face anymore. What did his voice sound like? Every night, she could hear it so perfectly in her dreams, calling to her, but she could never find him.

As she slowly regained consciousness, she began to sense something was wrong. This wasn't the hotel. She was on a mattress, but it wasn't the hotel mattress – she could feel a spring digging into her side. And her arms were pinned behind her back. She tried to roll over and that was when she realized they were bound.

The last thing she remembered was leaving the hotel bar Saturday night, claiming exhaustion when in actuality, she had been so dizzy that she knew she would pass out if she didn't lie down first. She was barely conscious when the man entered and leaned over her. He said something, but she couldn't understand him and he injected her with something.

She struggled against her bonds and tried to scream, but she was gagged.

From behind her, a door creaked open. The sound sent chills down her spine. It was as if the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. She held her breath and closed her eyes. Maybe he would think she was dead and leave her alone.

He gripped her shoulder and with a single, rough movement, flipped her over to face him. Clinching her eyes shut, she bit the inside of her cheek.

_Don't touch me._

He stroked her face and it took every ounce of willpower to prevent herself from shivering and recoiling from his touch. "Lena," he whispered. "Lena, it's time to wake up."

She didn't open her eyes.

_I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead. _

He hit her then, and the sheer force of his blow forced her eyes open. She gasped, though that sound was lost in the thick cotton of the gag.

He smiled, a cruel, knowing smile. "I knew you were awake," he cooed. He forced her upright and cut the ties binding her hands. "That's better, isn't it?" he asked, crouching down on the mattress. He slid his hands down her arms and gripped her wrists. "We're just getting started, Lena. We haven't even begun to have fun yet. I'm going to untie the gag now. But you have to do something for me. Scream for that camera over there, Lena. Scream so they can hear you all the way in Boston."


	2. Kyrie Eleison

_**Standard disclaimers apply. Thank-you to all my readers/reviewers! :D**_

_**CHAPTER TWO**_

Reid trolled the narrow streets of Southie for ten minutes, looking for a parking spot. He finally found one that would fit the behemoth of an SUV that the Boston field office had assigned him, three blocks from Lena's house on a small one-way street. He made sure to position the government parking tags prominently on the rear-view mirror. Neighborhoods with such limited parking space usually required residents to purchase parking tags and the last thing he needed was his car to get towed.

The late April air was damp and chilly, and a thin fog had rolled off the bay. Reid headed east, in the direction of the ocean. He had read about Southie in passing, as the backdrop to the vicious mob dramas that had played out under Whitey Bulger's discerning eye. Though recent gentrification had helped to cover the black eye years of mafia action had given the neighborhood, it still seemed like an odd choice for someone like Lena, who probably made enough money as an executive of an NFL to live in a much wealthier neighborhood.

Lena's townhouse was nestled in the middle of the block, as unremarkable as the houses on either side; unlike some of the houses Reid had passed on his way here, Lena wasn't flying a Patriots flag or even a Red Sox banner. The lawn was probably well kept during the summer, but a recent snow storm had stunted spring growth. A short walk led up to the house, where a woman was waiting for him.

At first glance, Reid was struck by how similar this woman looked to Lena. Both women wore their dark hair long and like Lena, this woman had eyes so dark her irises nearly blended with her pupils. But Lena's skin was a few shades lighter, a café au lait color while the woman before her had much browner skin.

She stood leaning against the front door, her arms crossed across her chest. "Are you from the FBI?" she asked. She spoke with a definite British accent.

"Dr. Reid," Reid said, waving in greeting. "Are you Lena's sister?"

The woman flashed him a tense, wry smile. "A lot of people make that mistake. I'm Nolee Singh. Lena's my best friend. Greg called me to tell me that someone from the FBI wanted to look at Lena's house and wanted to know if I had a key. I told him I'd meet you here."

Reid nodded slowly. "You're in law enforcement?" He took in her slightly furrowed brow. "You called Agent Sawyer by his first name, so I figured…"

Nolee shook her head and turned to unlock the door. "Profilers," she muttered. "I'm with the Suffolk County DA's office." She led him into Lena's house, kneeling quickly to pick up the mail, which had collected on the hardwood floor of the foyer. She set the mail and the keys on a small table that rested against the wall. "This is it," she said. "Is there anything in particular you're looking for?"

Reid glanced around the foyer. "I'm just trying to get a feel for her. How she lived." Directly in front of him was a staircase. To the right was a den. He peeked around the corner. The walls were lined with bookshelves, filled with various books. Several overstuffed chairs and a couch filled out the middle of the room and a TV stood against a far wall. DVDs and CDs took up the shelves closest to the TV.

He entered this room. "How did you and Lena meet?" he asked, reading the titles of the books on the wall.

"At NYU. We were roommates. I was getting my J.D. and Lena was getting her Masters."

"MBA?"

"No, the sports business program was an MS."

"Where did she do her undergrad?"

"USC. Southern California, not South Carolina."

"Right. She studied literature?" Reid pulled a copy of _Absalom, Absalom! _off the shelf and paged through it.

"And journalism, yeah. Actually, that was when I knew we'd be good friends – she'd read my father's book."

"Your father's an author?"

"Well, yeah, among other things." Nolee crossed the room and found the book. She handed it to Reid. "It was short listed for the Booker Prize in 1993. But since they had already awarded it to an Indian author the year before – well, he was from Sri Lanka, actually, but to the selection committee the distinction wasn't that pronounced – they didn't feel they could give it to him. So it went to someone from Ireland." Nolee smiled to herself, this time sad and nostalgic. "Lena always said he had been robbed."

Reid replaced both books. "She's very organized. She's got the Americans over here, almost even sub-organized into subjects. The post-colonial and international authors here, organized by country: Africa, India, China. And over here…" he paused and eyed another row of books. "She spoke Spanish, which makes sense, but she also spoke Russian?" He pointed to several rows of books printed in Cyrillic.

"Her father was Spanish and her mother was Russian – she spoke both before she learned English."

Reid turned away from the shelves and faced Nolee. "Was she born here? In the US, I mean."

"I don't know," Nolee admitted. "I know she lived in Chicago for a while when she was younger, but she always considered herself something of a wanderer. When she introduced herself to people while we were at NYU, she always said she was from Boston and she had the accent to prove it, so most people didn't really question it. Every so often, she'd say she was from LA, because that's where she went to undergrad, but usually she said Boston."

"Did she have any ties to anyone in Russia?"

"She has Russian friends. Maybe a cousin or something? I don't really know."

Reid scanned the den once more and returned to the foyer. In front of him now was the parlor, complete with a slate-covered fireplace and more overstuffed furniture. A coffee table sat between the fireplace and a cozy-looking couch. Lena had arranged a few books on the table and Reid inspected them: a book about Nicholas II of Russia, another with various scenes of Boston, and a collection of Doonesbury comic strips.

No photo albums," Reid noted, setting the Boston book back on the table.

"I'm sorry?"

"Most people have photo albums on display in their living rooms. You know, to show off their beautiful families and such. In fact, there aren't really any pictures in here at all."

The fire place had an orchid on one side of the mantle and a matryoshka decorated with a St. Petersburg scene on the other side, but no pictures. The closest thing to a picture in the entire room was a large portrait of the Boston skyline lit up at night hanging on the wall.

"Did she not get along well with her family?"

Nolee frowned. "Her parents died when she was six – car accident. She didn't have any siblings. I don't think it bothered her, though. In fact, I don't really think she gave it a whole lot of thought. She wasn't going to sit around a sulk about it, at least."

Reid sat down on the couch. "Was Lena acting strange recently?"

"What do you mean, strange?"

He shrugged. "Sudden mood swings, secretive behavior, a change in eating habits or the people she spent time with?"

Nolee sat down in one of the plush chairs. She leaned forward, resting her elbow on the arm of the chair and her cheek on the palm of her hand. "Lena's had a rough year. So was she acting differently then when we were at NYU, then yes, of course. But was she acting differently than she was in December? That's hard to say. To be honest, she's been busy with the draft. I haven't seen a whole lot of her since she went to the Combine in March."

"What do you mean, she's had a rough year?"

Nolee sighed and inspected her nails, gathering her thoughts. "She had a miscarriage last year – about this time, early May, actually. Aiden – her husband – was absolutely devastated. They were going to have a boy and Aiden was so excited. And Lena was really sick for a while. She didn't go into work for nearly a month."

Reid glanced around the room, noting for the second time the severe lack of personal photos in the room. "She was married? There's no evidence of a husband anywhere." His mind was reeling with this information, crafting a scenario despite himself. If this abduction had anything to do with a marital dispute, it would turn even uglier at any moment. "Are they getting divorced?"

Nolee had hung her head and focused intently on the pattern of the carpet. She ran a hand through her hair. "Aiden died in December. He worked for the Staties – he was a sergeant – and he was shot in a drug bust gone bad."

"What happened after he died?"

"Lena had to go back to work. The team was four games away from the playoffs and scrutinized by the media more and more every day."

"So she worked a lot?"

"This year was particularly stressful. Nate got in that car wreck in November and then the team lost the Super Bowl… She had a lot going on."

"Nate? Who's Nate?"

"One of the rookies. He was driving drunk after a game. It was a mess for Lena's department. She practically spent two days at the Mass Gen, fending off reporters."

"She's a fairly public figure, then?"

Nolee nodded. "Especially since Nate's accident. _Sports Illustrated_ did a feature on her and pictures of her end up in the _Herald_ and the _New York Post_ every so often."

Reid looked away and processed this information. "Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her or would have wanted her out of the way."

"No." Nolee bit her lip. "I've been asking myself that since I got the call that Lena was missing and I just can't think of anyone. People liked her. They could relate to her." She chewed on a nail and surveyed Reid, gauging him. This kind of scrutiny always put Reid ill at ease. He was used to being observed, but usually it was with a sense of awe or general confusion. He wasn't used to someone trying to profile him.

"There was one thing," Nolee said after a moment.

"What?"

"Lena came by my house on Friday night. She was leaving for New York in the morning. I wouldn't say she was agitated, but she wasn't entirely acting like herself. She seemed kind of nervous." Nolee reached into her briefcase and pulled out a thin CD case. She tapped it against her fingers. "She gave me this and she told me that if anything happened to her, I should give this to the proper authorities." Nolee passed it to Reid. "I thought she was just being melodramatic – she was prone to hyperbole from time to time – but then…"

The case contained a single rewritable CD, but the surface was blank – Lena hadn't written anything on the CD to identify what it was. Reid opened it up and took out the CD, flipping it over to see how much data had been burned on to it. It looked completely full. He raised his eyes to meet Nolee's. "Did you look at what's on here?"

"No. I threw it on my desk and didn't even think about it until this morning."

"But why give it to me? Why not Agent Sawyer? Or send it to the NYPD?"

"Look, if Lena really thought something was going to happen to her and she gave me something that would provide a clue to what happened to her, she trusted I would give it to the right person. And you seem like the right person. You were sent here to figure out what's going on in Lena's head right now. You of all people should be able to figure out why that CD was important to her."

* * *

Garcia called Morgan with her results as he and Rossi were driving to the precinct headquarters.

"Hey baby doll. Tell me you have some good news."

"Well, the good news is that the Hilton New York's surveillance cameras were actually operational. You'd be surprised the number of places that don't have working surveillance cameras."

Morgan blinked. "This is a one-way street."

Rossi craned his neck, catching sight of the sign a minute too late. "Shit," he muttered, leaning on the horn, even though he was the person driving in the wrong direction.

"What?" Garcia asked.

"Not you, doll face. Rossi just turned into oncoming traffic. Again."

"Anyone who drives in New York is insane," Garcia replied in sympathy. "Anyway, like I said, the good news is that the cameras were working. I looked as all the footage. Ten members of the team checked in Saturday morning, around eleven, but only two of them ever went back to the desk. I checked them against the list Hotch e-mailed me. They were the two members of Lena's staff with her at the draft – Ronnie Taylor and Ryan Hanover."

"That sounds promising. Did you send it to Hotch?"

Garcia chuckled. "Way ahead of you. Unfortunately, that's the best news I have for you. I check the security footage of Lena's floor. The only camera is at the elevator bay."

"Damn it. Nothing near her room?"

"No. But I looked at the footage. Lena came up to her room around one, alone. She didn't look that good either. She was kind on leaning against the wall – she looked kind of out of it."

"Drunk out of it? Rossi! Watch that girl!" A teenager darted out in front of the car, trying beat the SUV across the crosswalk.

Rossi sounded the horn again and the girl flipped him the bird. "I hate this city," Rossi growled, hunching over the steering wheel.

"Where are you going?" Garcia asked.

Morgan rolled his eyes and shook his head. "We're trying to get to the precinct."

"That's like two, three blocks away from the hotel, isn't it? Why are you driving?"

"Detective Ortega lent us a car – Rossi insisted on driving. Except that we keep getting lost."

"The GPS keeps trying to send me down one-way streets!" Rossi called.

"Did you catch that?"

Garcia laughed. "Oh yeah. By the way, Lena doesn't look drunk. She looks drugged or high, or something like that. But she did have a tumbler with her."

"Good." Morgan relayed this information. "We found an empty glass on her bedside table – we figured the unsub slipped her something."

"Okay, yeah. That makes sense. So, after Lena came up, maybe a half hour later, a man came up and got off on her floor. I've gone through every single minute of security tape for this floor and every other floor in the building. I never saw him again."

"That's got to be the unsub. Please tell me you got a good picture."

"No…" Garcia sighed. "He had a Yankees cap on and he kept his eyes down. I can't see anything. He knew where the camera was. I can tell you one thing, though. A key card was used to enter Lena's room. Whoever this guy is, she didn't let him in."

"Thanks, Garcia," Morgan said, hanging up.

Heaving a heavy sigh of relief, Rossi pulled into the precinct parking lot. He handed the keys to Morgan. "Next time, you drive."

Morgan smirked and dropped the keys into his pocket.


	3. Gradual

_**Standard disclaimers apply. Also, I believe that "The Great Gatsby" is in the public domain, but just to be safe: I've quoted a passage from Chapter 4 of "The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald. **_

**_Once again, many thanks to my reviewers and followers! :)_**

_**CHAPTER THREE**_

For J.J., a not-so-closeted football fanatic, the chance to see an NFL franchise up close and personal was an enticing plus of an otherwise dismal case. She arrived at Gillette Stadium to find it nearly deserted. Most of the players were taking advantage of a few months off to relax around Boston or return to their permanent homes elsewhere around the country before mini-camps began at the end of May. While the local MSL team also played at Gillette, soccer didn't have the draw of football and the stadium remained fairly quiet on a Monday morning.

The pregnant silence of the mammoth stadium was compounded by the gravitas of the situation. The entire building seemed to be in mourning. As the security guard led J.J. through the labyrinth of the building, staff members stuck their heads out of their doors, eyeing her with thinly veiled unease. They all were asking the same question: How could this happen to one of us? We're supposed to be safe.

Lena's assistant, Alicia, was waiting for J.J. in the atrium of the media relations suite.

"Thank-you for coming out here," Alicia said, extending her hand in greeting. "We haven't spoken to the press yet. We've issued a press release about the draft, but the media doesn't know that Lena's missing."

J.J. nodded. "If you don't mind waiting a little while longer, I have a few questions for you first."

"Anything." She motioned towards the double doors on one side of the atrium. "Why don't we talk in Lena's office? It might afford us a little more privacy."

J.J. glanced around and noticed a few people gathered in another doorway, watching her with interest. They all glanced away when J.J. made eye contact. "That might be best," she agreed.

Lena's office was large, with large picture windows along the far wall that looked out over the parking lot. It wasn't much of a view, but the windows filled the office with natural light and, since the suite was on the west side of the building, probably afforded spectacular views of the sunset. Lena's desk sat directly in front of the windows. Tables, couches and chairs filled the other half of the office, and it was to these that Alicia directed J.J.

"I just don't understand this," Alicia admitted as the two women sat down. "I mean, Lena was well liked here and was popular with the fans."

"I didn't realize that someone in Lena's position would be recognizable to the fans."

"Normally not. But this past season was unique. We had a rookie who was injured in a car wreck in November. She gave a press conference and suddenly was a very visible presence for the team. She has an accent, so she sounds like people here. She lives in Southie, not on the North Shore or a high-end Boston neighborhood like Back Bay or Beacon Hill. I think a lot of people feel like she's one of them and they feel like they have representation."

"What about the franchise itself? She seems fairly young to be in an executive position like this."

"She has connections. While she was getting her masters she worked for the NFL for almost a year and a half. She worked as an assistant to the Commissioner, so she came well recommended. Around that time, she was introduced to Wallace, the owner, and she impressed him. I think he would have hired her as soon as she graduated if the position was open. Wallace has a knack for seeing the potential in people, that's one of the reasons we draft so well every year. So when Allen Aldrege left three years ago, Lena was the first person Wallace called."

"What about her staff?"

Alicia shrugged. "Things were a little rough when Lena first arrived. Aldrege had been here for fifteen years when he retired and his style was very different than Lena's."

"How do you mean?"

"Lena came here from the Bears, a franchise that is very closed to the media and very strict about what information gets out. Before Lena got here, we were also fairly closed to the media, but we just didn't talk to them – we had a fairly antagonistic relationship with the press and Aldrege just let his staff do what they wanted. Lena's very hands on and wanted to change our image with the press. She wanted to look like she was giving the press what they wanted, all the while controlling what got out and what didn't. She held the staff accountable and they didn't like it."

"What changed?"

"Lena leveled with everyone. She told them that she had no problem replacing each and everyone on the staff with people from Chicago who would listen to her. She wasn't going to take any crap from anyone and she let them know that. And it worked."

J.J. nodded slowly, considering this. "So there wasn't anyone on her staff who bore a grudge against her?"

"Not that I can think of. I'm not saying that everyone loved her, but I can't imagine that anyone hated her enough to kidnap her."

"Did her behavior change recently? Was she doing anything different before she left for New York?"

Alicia paused. She chewed the inside of her cheek when she thought, J.J. noticed. She'd been around profilers for too long.

"She watched a lot of tape recently," Alicia said finally. "You know, video from games? Sometimes she'd watch press conferences, to help the coaches and players improve their performances. But we don't usually watch a whole lot of game tape up here."

"Was she looking for something specific?"

Alicia frowned. "I don't know. She never said."

---

After Nolee had left to argue an arraignment downtown, Reid felt a little more at ease with exploring Lena's house. Nolee had made him nervous, the way she followed him around like a lost puppy or something. She had wanted him to assure her that Lena was fine, and that she'd come home soon, like nothing had every happened. And in the past, he as been able deal with survivors. He could hold their hands, say those comforting nothings that helped them deal with the trauma of what was going on. But this time, he couldn't do it. It would be a lie. Granted, it had always been a lie, but this time, he knew it.

He climbed upstairs, recreating the picture the unsub had sent to the Patriots. The room was bare, with a mattress lying to one side. The chair was in the center of the room and pilasters were spaced evenly around the room. It wasn't an apartment, at least not a furnished apartment. In fact, it had looked more like a warehouse than an apartment. Okay. He was holding her in a warehouse or an old factory. Some sort of industrial building. This might be of some help if there weren't thousands of warehouses, factories and industrial buildings in the Five Boroughs. Add that to comparable buildings in the New Jersey area, Long Island and the surrounding suburbs… And that was assuming that he was holding her in New York or its environs. What if he had taken Lena out of the area? What if he had photographed Lena in New York and then moved her?

They desperately needed a profile.

She must have been terrified – he had been. And he had been in limited contact with the team. Lena had no one. He had almost given up. How could she not?

The second floor was bedrooms, mostly – the master bedroom on the right of the hallway and two spare bedrooms on the left. The master bedroom was as organized as the rest of the house and fairly uninteresting. But the first picture in the house, on her bedside table, caught his attention. He guessed it was Lena's husband. He had boyish good looks, the type of face that probably been killing girls since high school. With blue eyes and blonde hair, he looked all-American. It figured that a woman who worked in football would marry someone like him. He took advantage of his solitude to roll his eyes.

He returned the photo to its place on the table and left. The room that interested him the most was at the back of the house, overlooking the bay and the downtown skyline beyond it: Lena's office. Unlike the rest of the house, it was a controlled mess, with piles of papers and legal pads arranged in some order that apparently made sense to Lena. A set of wire bookshelves held more sports-related books that Reid had ever seen in his life, including editions of the NFL almanac spanning back six years. Lena had set up a whiteboard against one wall and it was covered with what Reid could only assume were notes on the draft.

Sitting down at her desk, he flipped through her papers. Her handwriting, he noticed, was fairly small and regular. People who wrote small were usually focused and often introverted, he thought. Interesting.

There was another picture on the desk – this time one of Lena and a player. Confetti fluttered around them. Both Lena and the player had on baseball caps with "2008 AFC CHAMPIONS" emblazoned across the top. Lena was holding some sort of a trophy and grinning up at the player.

Reid was struck by the separation between Lena's work life and the rest of her life – all of her work seemed contained within these four walls. That's why he was honestly surprised to find a copy of _The Great Gatsby _resting on the corner of the desk. The book didn't fit with his profile of her. It should have been downstairs, with the rest of her non-sporting books. Why was it up here?

He opened it to where a bookmark rested in the midst of chapter four. The name _Meyer Wolfsheim _had been underlined twice in blue pen. Quickly, he flipped through the rest of the book. The entire text was virtually unmarked, except for that name. Frowning, Reid turned back and scanned the passage.

_"Meyer Wolfsheim? No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: "He's the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919."_

_"Fixed the World's Series?" I repeated._

_The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World's Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely HAPPENED, the end of some inevitable chain. It had never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people – with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe._

_"How did he do that?" I asked after a minute. _

_"He just saw the opportunity." _

_"Why isn't he in jail?" _

_"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man." _

Reid had the nagging sensation that Lena intended him to read the passage. Nolee had already alluded to the idea that Lena sensed danger. And by leaving that CD in Nolee's care, to be delivered to the police in the event of some catastrophe, Lena was already leaving a breadcrumb trail for someone. What if she had left this book in this office on purpose?

He reread the passage, even though he had already committed it – indeed, the whole book – to memory when he had first read it at age eight. Why would Lena care about some fictional character fixing the World Series almost a century ago? He twirled around on the chair for a moment, organizing his thoughts.

There was the CD, which he intended to send to Garcia as soon as the opportunity presented itself. And there was this book, with its cryptic reference to a fixed World Series. As he lost momentum and stopped spinning, his gaze fell once more on the wire bookshelf and the six copies of the NFL Record and Fact Book. 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006…and 2007. Where was the copy for this past season, 2008?

Then he remembered. He had seen it downstairs, in the den, among all the other books lining those shelves. He tore back to the first floor and into the den. There it was, nestled in between _Dracula_ and _The Jane Austen Book Club. _He pulled it off the shelf, marveling at the simple brilliance of Lena's scheme. If someone broke into her house, looking for whatever it was she was hiding, he wouldn't notice the lone almanac on the shelf. And even if he did, he wouldn't think anything of it, as Lena worked in football. Only someone like Reid, who had profiled her would realized how out of place these books were in their respective rooms.

He sunk into one of the oversized chairs, mind buzzing. What was so explosive that Lena had left for New York resigned to the fact that she might not return to Boston? He chewed his lip as he paged through the almanac. No manifestos fluttered from these pages brimming with explanation. In fact, there were no papers in the book at all, except a square of yellow legal paper. Inside was written in all caps BLACK SOX 1919.

There it was again: 1919.

"What are you trying to tell me?" he asked aloud, scanning the pages the slip of paper had been stuck between: 86 and 87, detailing statistics for the Kansas City Chiefs. The number 87 had been circled in the same blue ink that underlined Meyer Wolfsheim in _The Great Gatsby._ He turned ahead to page 187. Again, the page number had been circled, as were pages 287, 387, 487, 587 and 687. As far as he could tell, the topics of each of these pages were disconnected. On a hunch, he checked _The Great Gatsby. _As he expected, every page with a permutation of the number 87 was also circled.

Completely puzzled, he opened the almanac again, curious to see if Lena had made any annotations on the Patriots' entry. Midway down the list of club officials Reid found Lena's name. She had crossed it out and written "Elena Lopez y Kovalevna" in its place. She also had drawn an arrow from her name down the page to some blank space near the bottom, where she wrote Ryan Hanover. Across the top was a string of numbers and a letter-number combination that could only be a password. An account number maybe, but once again this clue only created more questions.

Reid remained in the chair for a few more moments, sifting through everything.

The pictures.

There were only two pictures in the entire house. Maybe she had placed them on purpose. Reid glanced at his watch. He had to meet J.J. in Foxboro. He darted upstairs once more to collect the photo of Aiden and the AFC Championship picture. He couldn't exactly explain it, but he sensed they had hidden meaning. Once he had gathered these pictures, he tossed everything, the books, the pictures and the CD into his messenger bag. He wouldn't tell the team about what he had discovered, not yet. He knew Lena was trying to tell him something and he could feel that knowledge just beyond his reach.

And if there was one thing Spencer Reid had a handle on, it was acquiring knowledge.

---

When Morgan and Rossi arrived at the precinct headquarters, they found that Hotch and Prentiss had made little headway with the NYPD. The agents had appropriated a conference room and set up a whiteboard detailing what little information they had. It turned out Ortega was right – the NYPD hadn't made much headway before the FBI arrived.

Morgan handed off the tumbler from Lena's hotel room the evidence techs before joining the team in the conference room. He found Rossi and Prentiss pouring over a couple stills from the security footage that Garcia had sent them.

"Garcia estimates that he's around six feet tall, give or take an inch," Prentiss was saying.

"That's the unsub?" Morgan asked, taking the still. He shook his head. "He looks completely normal."

Hotch stuck his head into the conference room. "Ready?"

The three agents exchanged glances. "I think so," Prentiss replied.

All available officers had gathered in the precinct bull pin, waiting for the FBI profile. The agents agreed that they needed to establish a profile as soon as possible, even though they hadn't spoken with Reid and J.J.

Hotch began. "We have surveillance video from the Hilton, so we know that we're looking for a white male, around six feet tall. His face is obscured, but we think he's probably in his mid to late thirties. He probably looks fairly normal, maybe even trustworthy. He's not going to raise any eyebrows."

"But he lacks confidence, especially with women," Prentiss continued. "He's unsure of himself and he had to drug the victim in order to get her out of the hotel. He also has a problem with authority. He probably won't look you in the eye when you talk to him. He might even have a stutter when he talks."

"He's a sadist," Morgan interjected. "He gets sexual satisfaction from torture. He'll probably keep Lena alive longer so he can torture her. But when the torture stops getting him off, he'll probably escalate to murder, looking for that same high."

"More than anything, though, he wants attention," Rossi said. "That's why he sent the pictures to Wallace and Mann and why he'll contact us again. The fact that he sent the pictures to people who knew Lena and not to the police or the media suggests that he gets off on torturing these people almost as much as Lena's torture. The thought of other people's anguish makes Lena's anguish sweeter."

"Agent Hotchner?" A uniformed officer entered the bull pin, carrying a package with her. "This just arrived for you. It's marked urgent."

Hotch grabbed a pair of gloves from a box on a nearby desk and put them on before accepting the package. Inside was a videotape. "This has got to be from him," he muttered.

Ortega snapped into action, quickly collecting a TV and VCR for the conference room. Hotch slid the video into the VCR. He had a feeling he knew what was going to be on the tape and he didn't want to see it. The team watched the tape in a silence punctuated only by screaming. Finally, Prentiss turned away.

"Turn it off," she muttered. "Turn it off."

Morgan switched off the TV.

"We've got to find this guy," Ortega said. "I can't watch any more of these tapes."

---

Reid arrived at Gillette and was whisked away to the media relations suite minutes after Elliot Mann reached Lena's office. J.J. was relieved to see Reid, as she wanted an actual profiler to interview him. Elliot, the franchise quarterback, was something of a celebrity, though unlike many NFL quarterbacks, he tried to stay out of the limelight. While many of his compatriots were permanent fixtures on TV, appearing in a bevy of commercials, late-night talk shows and comedy sketch shows, Elliot tended to avoid his notoriety. Commentators accused Elliot of pretension, but the truth was that he was simply shy and hated seeing himself in the papers or on TV.

Reid evaluated Elliot as he walked in the door and his immediate reaction was negative. Maybe it was getting tied to a goalpost by the football team at the age of twelve, maybe it was simply a lifetime of teasing at the hands of jocks, but Reid simply didn't like football players. He didn't really understand the national fascination with football – indeed sports in general – and resented the growing emphasis universities were giving to sports.

"You received one of the pictures from the unsub?" Reid said by way of greeting.

Elliot nodded. "It was delivered to my house, which is kind of odd, because my address is unlisted. But I suppose with the Internet nowadays…"

"Why was it sent to you?" Reid asked.

"What?" Elliot frowned. "I don't quite follow you."

Reid shrugged. "I can understand the unsub sending the picture to Wallace. I mean, he's her boss. But you're the quarterback. I don't get the connection between you and Lena."

"Well, we're close, I guess," Elliot said. "We both went to USC, even though she graduated before I did. We first met when she worked for the NFL – she as one of my liaisons with the league during the draft. And then she came here and we just hit it off, I guess. But we're just friends, nothing more." He sighed. "She works with the players to help them improve their media presentation – prepping us for press conferences and such, so we see more of her."

Reid paused, thinking back to his conversation with Nolee. "What did the players think of how she handled the situation with someone named Nate?"

"Nate Bresland, yeah. It was fine, I guess. I don't think they thought about the media coverage that much. We were preoccupied with how the accident would change our defense."

"Was Nate's number 87?" Reid asked, a though suddenly occurring to him. If Lena was trying to tell him about a person, she might find it safer to note his number, not his name.

"Wide receivers and tight ends are assigned numbers in the eighties," Alicia said. "Nate's a linebacker – his number's in the fifties."

"Nate's 53," Elliot said. "Eighty-seven is Ray DeSalle, a receiver."

"Does he have any issue with Lena?"

Elliot shook his head. "I don't think so. I don't think they know each other all that well."

Reid's cell began to ring and he excused himself. "Hey Garcia."

"Hey, boy genius, are you anywhere near a TV?"

He glanced around the room. There was a TV mounted on the wall near the couches where he had just been interviewing Elliot. He also noticed Alicia speaking to another employee in the doorway between the atrium and Lena's office. "Yeah. Why?"

"Flip it on to ESPN now. There's something you need to see."

Reid hung up and pointed to the TV. "We need to turn this on now," he said just as Alicia returned to the couches, saying "We have a problem."

J.J. turned on the TV, which was already tuned to ESPN. SportCenter was on.

"…According to the story, first reported on the _Boston Herald _website this afternoon, Lopez was last seen on Saturday night at the NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. A source in New York now claims that Lopez has been missing since Saturday night and that the FBI has been called in investigate the disappearance. The New England Patriots have yet to comment though the team has issued several press releases about the draft."

"He went to the press," J.J. whispered.

"Shit." Alicia was wringing her hands. "And the _Herald_ too."

J.J. turned away from the TV to consider her. "Is his choice of the _Herald_ significant?"

"We don't have a very good relationship with the _Herald_. Lena doesn't really like the sports editor over there and they tend to be antagonistic towards the franchise. For example, they ran an article alleging misconduct during last years draft on the morning of the Super Bowl, just to stir trouble. They later retracted it."

Reid raised his eyebrows. "So he knows about the team's history with the _Herald_."

Alicia sunk down onto one of the couches. "Who the hell is this guy and what does he want?"

J.J. and Reid didn't reply, but they exchanged glances. The unsub seemed three steps ahead of them all the time. Hotch wasn't going to like this at all. They had to get to New York as soon as possible and join the team.


	4. Sequence A

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust...

"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

"They called me the hyacinth girl."

- Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

---T.S. Eliot, _The Wasteland, _1922.

_**INTERLUDE**_

_The park was surprisingly silent for a summer morning. No traffic rolled by on the surrounding streets, no children played in the fountain or ran through the park, no dogs frolicked in the dog run. It was virtually empty and the silence unnerved him. He had a niggling sensation of dread – something horrible must have happened to leave the park – and the city beyond it – so deserted. He was standing underneath the monument, staring up Fifth and it occurred to him that this is what it felt like to be the last person alive in the world. He was consumed by an overwhelming emptiness. _

_A piece of paper, crumpled and abandoned, scuttled across the street, drawn by a slight breeze. The sound of the scraping punctured the hush and sounded to him like nails on a chalkboard. At last, the balled paper came to a rest at his feet and he picked it up. He flattened it, but couldn't read what was written across it. The silence rushed in on him again as he struggled with the text and the sheer vastness of the void mobbed him. He felt compelled to enter the park, if anything to flee the stark reality of the urban wasteland around him. _

_Past the fountain and the monument, past the dog run, at the northwest entrance of the park was an open area, ringed by benches and chess boards. She was sitting alone at one of the boards, dressed all in white, the board set up for a game. She sat bolt upright, her back ramrod straight. Her eyes were vacant, staring across the walkway, but seeing nothing. He approached her and she looked up. Her expression was blank. _

_"I've been waiting for you," she said, her voice hollow._

_He sat down across from her. She didn't blink as she watched him. Through the trees, the sunlight cast a dappled light over her face and her eyes moved in and out of the shadows and as a sudden gust, stronger than before, rustled the leaves. _

_"It's you," he replied. "I've been looking for you. But I didn't think I'd find you here." He was relieved, not only because she was here and he could stop looking for her, but because another human presence consoled him that he was not – as he feared – entirely alone. _

_"What did you expect? A red room? Would you like me to speak backwards to you? Whisper the name of the murderer in your ear? Ebyam htiw rouy citedie yromem, ll'uoy rebmemer ti nehw uoy ekaw pu." _

_He frowned down at the chess board. She was playing with the black chessmen so the first move was his. _

_"Why_ The Great Gatsby_? You're a subjectivist. I saw your books: William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Arundahti Roy. They all write non-linear, fragmented narratives. You'd find the relative clarity and strait-forward approach of the Lost Generation sophomoric and overly simplistic."_

_She cocked her head at him. "What makes you think you know my reading habits?" _

_"I'm a profiler. It's my job." _

_"Then you tell me. Why _The Great Gatsby_?" She smiled enigmatically._

_"Meyer Wolfsheim. Clearly that name's important to you. It's the only think you underlined in the entire book." _

_She fingered a bishop, rocking it back and forth along the edge of its base. "I think you're missing the forest for the trees." Her voice was even, detached and he felt a growing flush of emotion – an amalgam of panic and frustration. _

_"I don't even know what I'm looking for!"_

_He shook his head and stared down at the board once again. He reached out to move his pawn but she extended her hand and touched his to prevent him from playing. Her skin was cold, almost unnaturally so. _

_"Don't. It's a stalemate." _

_"I don't ever reach stalemate. I always win." _

_She pointed at the board. "Korchnoi – Karpov, 1978." _

_She stood to leave and as she moved past his seat, he grasped her wrist. She glanced down at him, and for the first time, a ghost of emotion passed across her face – pain. _

_"_My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think_," she murmured. _

_"I want to stay with you. Sit back down," he said. _

_But she was already shaking her head, pulling away. "_I think we are in rats' alley, where the dead men lost their bones. You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing_?"_

_"You're bleeding," he whispered. _

_She looked down and as she did a red stain began to blossom in the center of her shirt. She turned her head slightly, watching the blood ooze down her shirt and her pants. A few crimson drops plopped onto the chessboard. She raised her gaze to meet his eyes. "So are you." _

_Suddenly, she was gone, and he found himself gripping Tobias Hankel's wrist instead of hers. The scene shifted and he found himself back in that barn, tied to that chair. _

_Tobias held a syringe in his free hand and he now held it up, so he could see it. "I know you want it, all you have to do is say when." _

* * *

Reid awoke with a start, adrenaline pumping through his veins.


	5. Tract

_**Hmmm... It suddenly occured to me how many copyrights I might be infringing on in this chapter and given the NFL's rabid protection of their own copyright and that of the Super Bowl, I figured I better stick in another disclaimer. I don't own basically anything in this chapter, save for my own original characters. I've only used them to add genuine flavour to this story. I'm a poor, starving grad student so please don't sue me! **_

_**CHAPTER FOUR**_

Ryan Hanover woke early, and watched Tuesday morning dawn grey and dreary. He stood at his window, craning his neck to watch bleary-eyed NBC and GE employees hurry down Sixth towards Rockefeller Center, sipping coffee from steaming Starbucks cups. Ryan, like the rest of the Patriots contingent in New York, had been more or less confined to the hotel since Lena's disappearance was reported to the NYPD. The exile was becoming more and more frustrating by the hour. Granted, the police had not restricted the team's movement per say; Ryan simply felt _observed_. He had barely left the hotel since Sunday night – he didn't want to draw any undue attention to himself. His meals came courtesy of room service, just as the waffles and coffee had arrived ten minutes earlier, and he went upstairs to the executive lounge to flip though their copies of the day's newspapers. It was self preservation – desperate times called for desperate measures.

And then there was that additional matter of the FBI. While the police had interviewed everyone on Sunday, the FBI had yet to speak with the Patriots' staff. This lag time left Ryan unnerved, wondering what exactly what – or how much – the FBI knew. To a certain extent, he was surprised the FBI had been brought in on the case. Evidently, Wallace had more political sway than even Ryan had guessed.

He flipped on the TV, still set to ESPN. SportsCenter was replaying their report on Lena's abduction for – what was it? – the tenth or eleventh time, at least. He glowered at the screen and the tape of the blonde FBI agent holding a press conference up at Gillette. This had gotten completely out of control. This was his moment, his time to step out of Lena's shadow and shine. Instead, he was locked in this fucking hotel waiting for the FBI to decide to interview him. He had always thought he had terrible luck.

A sharp wrap on his door brought him back to the present. Ronnie was standing in the doorway, fidgeting with his sleeve. His face was pale and drawn, large dark circles surrounded his eyes. "I can't take much more of this, Ryan," he whispered.

Ryan pulled him into the room and slammed the door behind him. "What?"

"The FBI is here, cops are crawling all over the place…I've got to get out of here."

Ryan sighed and motioned to the pot of coffee sitting on the room service cart. "Sit down, shut up, take a breath and have a cup of coffee."

Ronnie sat down on the bed opposite Ryan's and reached for a mug. "Do you think they're trying to get someone to crack?" he asked. "By not talking to us?"

"I have no idea, Ronnie," Ryan said slowly and disdainfully.

"God." Ronnie set the mug on the bedside table without drinking from it. "Jesus Christ." He pressed his palms against his eyes, groaning.

"Please try to keep it down, I'd rather not have the FBI thinking we're fucking each other," Ryan drawled, refilling his own mug and turning his attention back to the TV, now recapping last night's baseball highlights.

"What? Are they _watching _us? Ryan, this is deep shit. What is going on?"

Ryan shrugged.

"How can you be so cool, man? What if she's dead?"

"She probably is. It's been like two and a half days since she disappeared." Ryan flipped off the TV. "Listen. Usually when someone gets in a situation like this, they had it coming to them. So she probably got what she deserved. There's nothing we can do, so having a shit-fit about it isn't going to do either of us any good." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Look at me. Did you say anything to the cops?"

Ronnie shook his head. "No. Nothing."

"Then just do the exact same thing with the feds and you'll be fine. Like I said, she got what she deserved. Take my word for it."

Ronnie stared at Ryan for an interminable moment. "Yeah, right, man. I won't say anything to the feds. Thanks, man."

Ryan watched the intern leave his room. He took another swig of his coffee and smiled before reaching for the room phone. Perhaps this was a little like how Houdini felt when he'd completed a trick: worshiped and adored because his callow, dim-witted audience couldn't understand his magic. Magic, Ryan thought as he dialed the number, was all about misdirection. It wasn't all that different from media relations, he mused. Most people took what they saw before them as truth and never realized that most of what they read or saw on TV was not actuality, but merely what the person pulling the strings wanted everyone else to believe. In fact, reality, Ryan believed, was entirely too easy to manipulate.

* * *

Throughout the cab ride from JFK, J.J. kept sneaking what she hoped were covert glances at Reid, disconcerted by how exhausted he looked. She had found him watching football tape on his computer when she knocked on his door this morning around six. Lena's friend had given him the CD, he explained, and all it contained was footage from the same game, which J.J. had recognized as the Super Bowl. It seemed to have been recorded by the team, though, because it contained none of the typical broadcast accoutrements like commentary, scoreboards, timers and commercials.

"I don't get it," Reid admitted after he and J.J. had spent close to a half hour watching the files on the CD. "Why would Lena be so concerned about getting a CD of a football game to the FBI? I mean, don't millions of people watch the Super Bowl every year? Everyone would have access to this. It's not special."

J.J. frowned at the screen. "Well, not everyone would have access to this specific video. It's the team's own video. But you're right. It's not like no one saw this game."

"Who won this game?"

Reid's naivety when it came to sports was endearing, J.J. thought. Before yesterday, Reid probably didn't even know that the New England Patriots played football let alone that they had played in the Super Bowl. "Seattle did."

"So the other team?"

J.J. chuckled. "Yeah. It was a weird game. New England played really poorly in the first half – they were down by two or three scores by halftime. But they came back and tied the game in the second half. It was bizarre, like a different team played the second half. Then, with something like five minutes to go, Elliot, the quarterback, got sacked and he lost the ball. The ref called it a fumble and gave Seattle the ball, even though just about everyone thought it was an incomplete pass and New England should have kept possession. Seattle drove down the field, got a touchdown and won the game."

"Who was the favorite?"

"New England. Hands down. Seattle didn't have a very good record going into the playoffs."

Reid nodded slowly, rocking back and forth on the back legs of his chair. "There must have been some pretty unhappy bookies that evening."

With that, Reid had lapsed into a preoccupied silence that had lasted through the short flight from Boston into their cab ride. And it was this silence that most concerned J.J. because she had seen it before. He had the same sleep-deprived look on his face that had haunted his countenance for weeks after Tobias Hankel abducted, tortured and nearly killed him. It was the same expression he had worn during the day last year in Vegas when at night he was plagued by nightmares of a little boy murdered in his neighborhood years before. He was troubled and had turned inward again, leaving J.J. at a loss. She didn't know how to help him when he got like this. He would blame himself if they found Lena dead, convincing himself if he had just been stronger, smarter, quicker, he could have found her. And even Morgan would have a hard time getting through to him. Gideon was the only one who would have been able to truly reach Reid at times like this, but Gideon was gone, placing a heavy burden – a nearly insurmountable task – on the BAU's shoulders.

She shot another look in Reid's direction.

"Just ask me already," he said. She couldn't tell if he was bemused or irritated; his face was blank.

"What?"

He smirked, shaking his head. "Come on, J.J. I'm a profiler. It's my job to observe behavior. You're going to say, 'Spence, is everything okay?' to which I'll reply, 'Of course, J.J., why wouldn't it be?' and you'll say, 'Are you sure?' hoping I'll crumble and open up."

"Well…will you?"

Reid considered her for a moment, then looked away, staring at his hands. He sighed and the smile melted from his lips. "I dreamed about her last night."

J.J. frowned. "About Lena?"

He nodded. "We were in this park, playing chess. She was acting really strange, like she was incapable of feeling emotion. Then she started quoting T.S. Eliot. She asked me to stay with her but then she left." He was staring straight ahead, eyes slightly unfocused as he tried to remember his dream. "She said '_You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?'_ It's from the poem, but it seemed like more than that…like she was trying to tell me something. It's so oblique, though. I don't know what she's trying to say."

"Spence," J.J. murmured, reaching for his hand. "Spence, is it possible you're too close to this case? I mean, you have to admit that those pictures look very similar to what you…" she trailed off, unable to complete the sentence.

"I'm not going back to Quantico now," Reid said. "I can't give up on her."

J.J. didn't want to argue with him and she knew it was a loosing battle anyway. But she was still concerned. Reid was undeniably sensitive in situations like this and if he was already having dreams about the victim… J.J. felt a nervous anxiety settling in the pit of her stomach and she shut her eyes, praying that the rest of the team had discovered something to move the investigation forward.

* * *

J.J. and Reid arrived at the precinct headquarters to find the conference room set aside for the BAU empty. One of the detectives directed them to the interrogation rooms, a floor above the main precinct bull pin. They met Prentiss, Hotch and Rossi, watching Morgan and Ortega question one of the Patriots organization members.

"Ryan Hanover," Prentiss said, nodding towards the room. "He's a narcissist, but we can't arrest him for being a douche bag."

J.J. smiled. "Unfortunately."

Reid peered into the interrogation room. "Is he a suspect?"

Prentiss shrugged. "The security tape from the hotel shows that two people returned to the front desk after checking in, this asshole and an intern from the media relations department, Ronnie Taylor. The unsub had a key to Lena's room and we think someone from the team gave it to him." She fell silent as Morgan began to speak to Ryan again.

"So you're in charge of the media relations department now, hun?" he asked, glancing through a file on the table in front of him.

"It's hard to be in charge of anything when you're stuck in some hotel," Ryan replied.

"But when you go back to Boston, you'll be in charge, right?" Ortega prompted, frowning.

Ryan started ahead of himself for a moment, thinking. Slowly he began to nod. "Yeah, I suppose I would be," he said, as if the thought had never occurred to him before.

Hotch crossed his arms across his chest. "He's been thinking about that since Lena disappeared," he said, irritated. "How could he not – he's Lena's VP."

Morgan sighed. "It looks like you've been with the Patriots for a while now. Why didn't they hire you when the old media relations head retired?"

"How should I know?" Ryan asked. "I guess they wanted to look hip. I mean, they got two for the price of one when they hired Lena. Whereas, I'm a little too WASP-y."

"How so?" Ortega asked.

"They killed two birds with one stone: they hired a woman _and _a minority. No one can accuse them of chauvinistic, racist hiring principles when they've got a Latina in an executive position in the front office."

Morgan leaned forward on his elbows, eyeing Ryan. "So you're telling me that Lena got hired based on politics, not on ability."

"She's not even thirty yet! A few years with the league office and a few years with a second-rate franchise does not a media relations director make."

"See, that's interesting," Morgan said, turning his attention back to the folder before him. "Because I had our tech girl do a little digging on you and what she came up with isn't particularly awe inspiring. Average grades in prep school, below average grades at UMass – I suppose you didn't want to let studying get in the way of your college education. Then there's the interesting friendship between Jerry Wallace, Patriots owner, and your father – they were roommates at Harvard, I see. And don't forget that luxury box your father buys every year at Gillette Stadium."

Ryan was grinding his jaws together. "So?"

"So, all this tells me that you couldn't find yourself a job, so dad got you a job with his friend Jerry Wallace just to stop your whining."

"That just goes to show how little you know," Ryan snapped.

Ortega stood up and began pacing the room. "Things don't look all that good for you, Ryan. Let me tell you what I think happened. You never liked Lena coming in and taking the job that should have been yours. But things really got out of hand when she started getting popular in Boston – you wanted that attention, so you decided to get rid of the competition. So you slip Lena a roofie on Saturday night, take her from her room and kill her and dump the body. Then you convince the team not to report the disappearance until Sunday night, giving you twenty-four hours to clean up after yourself."

"Just tell us what you did with the body," Morgan said. He glanced at Ortega. "If you cooperate, we can probably talk the DA into a deal."

Ryan just shook his head and smirked. "If I'm such a bad candidate for Lena's job, why would I kill her? There's no guarantee they'd promote me."

Rossi sighed and turned away from the window. He exchanged a weary look with Hotch. "He doesn't know about the tape."

Hotch agreed. "If he's in on it, he truly thinks she's dead. We don't have enough to go on, and he's not giving us anything."

"What tape?" Reid asked.

"We got a communication from the unsub yesterday evening," Rossi said.

"I want to see it."

J.J. shot Prentiss a desperate, concerned look and shook her head. After the conversation she and Reid had shared in the cab from JFK, J.J. knew that Reid should never see that tape. She had been with the BAU long enough to know whatever was on the tape, Reid – in the emotional state he seemed to be in at the moment – didn't need to see it.

"Reid, we've already given the NYPD a profile. You don't need to see it. We're going to send it to Garcia this afternoon anyway."

"I want to see it," Reid repeated, his voice low and measured.

Hotch nodded. "Okay, come on," he said, leading Reid away from the interrogation rooms. J.J. watched them leave, incredulous.

Back in the conference room, Hotch handed Reid the tape. "I know I can't stop you from watching this, but I don't think you should and I don't think the rest of the team thinks you should."

Reid turned the tape over in his hands, refusing to meet Hotch's gaze.

"Reid, look at me." Hotch sighed, considering the young genius. "I can't stop you from watching this, but if I think there's something about this case clouding your judgment or hindering your performance, I will send you home."

"I'm fine, Hotch."

"Are you? J.J. doesn't seem to think so."

"J.J. worries too much."

Hotch leaned against the circular table in the middle of the room. "Reid, I know the temptation is to get emotionally involved, especially when you have something of a shared experience with the victim. But we need you on top of your game, Reid. Don't get caught up in this." With this final admonition, Hotch left the conference room. Reid nodded to himself but popped the video tape into the VCR anyway.

* * *

"Office of the supreme and omniscient being Penelope Garcia. How can I help you, mortal?"

"Garcia, it's me," Reid said softly. He needed to talk to someone – anyone – to get those screams out of his head.

"Oh, well, you're more of a demi-god, then, sweetie," Garcia replied cheerily. "What can I do you for?"

We have a couple videos we're going to send you, to see what you can make of them. One of them's from the unsub."

"Great. My favorite," Garcia interjected dryly.

Reid didn't laugh. "The other one is a CD that Lena's friend gave me in Boston. It's a bunch of footage of the Super Bowl. I need you to check it and see if there's anything encrypted in it or something." He paused. "Listen, do you know anything about football?"

Garcia chuckled. "You're kidding right?" When Reid didn't respond, she grew more serious. "Not much. But Kevin's a fantasy football nut. I think he's still nursing a broken heart that he could never make the high school varsity team."

"So he'd be able to figure out if something's not right with a game?"

"Yeah, probably."

"Lena seems preoccupied with the number 87. There's a guy who wears that number on the team – a guy named Ray DeSalle. Have Kevin watch him, see if there's something different about the way he's playing."

"Sure thing, boy genius. Anything else?"

"Can you look up a phrase for me?" Over the phone, Reid could hear Garcia tapping rapidly to bring up one of her search programs.

"Okay, shoot."

"She had written the phrase 'Black Sox 1919' on a piece of paper in one of her books. Does that mean anything?"

She hummed as she scanned the information on her computer. "Well, there's the Black Sox scandal in 1919 – the Chicago White Sox agreed to fix the World Series."

"The 1919 World Series?"

"Right. It looks like eight different players agreed to throw the games – it featured all sort of intrigue and mafia action. Pretty wild."

"Hmmm." Reid fished Lena's copy of _The Great Gatsby _out of his messenger bag and opened it to the passage about Meyer Wolfsheim. "Lena marked a section of _The Great Gatsby_ that talked about fixing the World Series. Thanks, Garcia. Let me know if you find anything on either of those tapes."

Reid switched off his phone and ran his fingers through his hair. Lena's captor was an undeniable sexual sadist, but the BAU had suspected that before the tape arrived. The tape seemed to have been filmed in the same room as the original photograph. So he hadn't moved her. That was one fact in the FBI's favor, at least. Hopefully Garcia would be able to isolate some sound that would help pinpoint the location.

He frowned and turned his attention back to the book in his hands. The White Sox threw the World Series in 1919 and Lena wanted him to know that. But why would Lena care about a World Series played 90 years ago? Reid didn't know much about sports, but he knew cheating was rampant across the board in the form of steroids, judging conflicts and the like. Cheating wasn't anything new.

But…

Reid flipped open his cell and dialed Alicia's number in Foxboro. Lena's assistance answered on the second ring. "Alicia, this is Dr. Reid with the FBI, I have a question for you."

"Anything."

"Is it possible to throw the Super Bowl?"

Alicia didn't answer for a few moments. "Throw the Super Bowl?" she asked finally.

"You know, lose it on purpose."

"Well…" Alicia sighed. "I don't know. I mean, I guess _anything _is possible, but it'd be really, really difficult to pull off."

"The White Sox threw the World Series in 1919," Reid pointed out.

"1919 was a long time ago." Alicia lapsed into silence again, thinking. "You couldn't do it alone, that's for sure. You know, you'd have to ask someone who works with the players or maybe played professionally. They'd know better than me if it could be done. But I have to be honest, if you're considering it as a motive for Lena's disappearance, it's a long shot."

"Why do you say that?"

"We lost, end of story. There was nothing questionable about it."

Reid thought back to the conversation he shared with J.J. earlier that morning. "Someone told me that there was a questionable call that lost the game."

"No," Alicia said. "No. The refs for the Super Bowl are experienced, vetted well before the game. The ref who made that call was a twenty-year vet. It was a bad call, but it wasn't made because someone paid him off. Sometimes the best team doesn't win; sometimes you just have a bad day. That's all that happened."

"You're sure?"

"This is a very disciplined organization, Dr. Reid. People aren't running around, engaging in underhand deals to throw the Super Bowl. There might be people out there who don't like how absolutely Mike coaches, who don't like the way Wallace does business, who might even suspect that the players are dirty. But no one would go so far as to accuse the franchise or anyone in it of throwing any game, let alone one as important as the Super Bowl."

Reid sighed. "I'm just checking out all avenues of investigation. Thank you for your time."

It was PR speak and it told him absolutely nothing. Except that if Lena suspected someone of throwing the game, she had either told her staff to deny everything, or she hadn't told them anything at all. He guessed the latter. It would be quite a coup, if she discovered someone in the organization had managed to throw the game. In fact, it would be quite a coup to orchestrate a fixed game in the first place. Was it possible that Lena thought the game had been thrown when it hadn't been? Wouldn't it be ironic if she thought she was going to be killed because she was so sure the game had been thrown and she had been abducted for another reason entirely.

He jumped as his cell phone rang, bringing him back to the present. "Reid," he answered.

"Dr. Reid, this is Nolee Singh, Lena's friend in Boston?"

"Yes, Nolee, is everything okay?"

"No. I just got my mail here at the DA's office and I got a letter…it's addressed in Lena's handwriting and it's post marked from yesterday."


	6. Dies Irae

_**Standard disclaimers apply. Thank-you once again to my readers! As always, I appreciate your feedback! :D**_

_**CHAPTER FIVE**_

Reid paused to consider the ramifications of Nolee's comment. "Are you sure it's her handwriting?" he asked finally.

"It looks a little shaky, but it looks like hers," Nolee replied. Reid noted that the pitch of her voice was a couple notes higher and reedier than when they had last spoken. Whether or not Lena had actually written this letter, Nolee – arguably the one person who knew her best – believed she had. And this conviction unnerved her.

"Have you opened it yet?"

"No. I wanted to contact you first, just in case." Though she didn't say in case of what. "Do…do you think it's possible that she managed to escape? That maybe she's hiding somewhere, waiting for the police to help her?"

That was highly unlikely, Reid thought. They knew the unsub got off on sending "tokens" to people connected to Lena, evidenced by the photos Jerry Wallace and Elliot Mann had received on Sunday morning, and the video tape delivered to the precinct last night. The unsub had probably forced Lena to address the envelope herself, to further antagonize Nolee.

But he didn't disclose any of these musings to Nolee. Instead, he merely replied, "We won't know anything until we analyze it. Can you give it to Agent Sawyer at the Boston field office? He'll send it down to us, so we can look at it."

After Nolee was satisfactorily calmed down, and had hung up to deliver the letter to Agent Sawyer, Reid leaned back in his chair, running his fingers through his hair. He sighed, allowing his mind to wander for a moment, as he considered the whiteboard set up at the end of the table, detailing the information the FBI and NYPD had gathered about the case.

Mind still whirring, he got up, crossed the room to the board and, armed with a marker, flipped it over, so he had a clean surface to write on. He needed a timeline. On the right-hand side of the board, he wrote _April 25 2009_. According to the information from the NYPD, the draft had begun at four pm. He wrote that underneath the date. Garcia had told Morgan that, on the security footage, Lena went up to her room around one on Sunday morning. He added this date and time to the board. By one-thirty, the unsub had taken her. At four in the morning, the photos were delivered in Boston. Meanwhile, the disappearance wasn't reported until eight or nine that night.

He could account for Lena from one to one-thirty; she was in her room. And from four pm until some unspecified time Saturday night, the entire team had been at Radio City Music Hall, at the draft. Lena had come upstairs with a drink, so the team must have stopped at the hotel bar after the draft. Well, at least Lena had. And the roofie had been slipped to her then, probably by a member of the team, not the unsub himself.

Reid took a step back from the board and considered this situation. If he were going to drug Lena, he'd want everyone else on the team to be there with him. That way, the entire group would share suspicion. If he were alone with Lena, it'd be far too easy for someone else to finger him. There was, after all, a reason why people roofied their girlfriends at parties. Maybe he even suggested they all go out. Would he have been that careless?

Normally, the effects of a date-rape drug like GHB lasted for about two to three hours, but it had been mixed with alcohol, so the effects probably had lasted longer. Even if Lena had been drugged around eleven, she would have still been dissociated by one. But it was more likely she had been drugged closer to twelve thirty. Someone would have noticed if she spent two hours in the bar, drugged. She probably would have passed out. No, whoever had roofied Lena had slipped her the drug around twelve-thirty, quarter to one, and Lena, thinking perhaps that she was drunk, or realizing that her worst fears might be confirmed, had gone upstairs, hoping probably, to sleep it off.

He wrote _12:30 – Lena drugged(?) _under Sunday's date.

"What time did the team arrive in New York on Saturday?" Reid asked Morgan, who was entering the conference room, bearing coffee.

"How'd you know I was here?" Morgan asked, scanning Reid's work with the whiteboard.

Reid turned and shot him a smirk over his shoulder. "Genius, remember?"

"Silly me. And here I thought that meant you were just wicked intelligent, not psychic. Why do you want to know when the team arrived?" He handed Reid one of the Styrofoam cups.

Reid nodded to the whiteboard. "I'm trying to figure out a timeline."

Morgan pulled a notebook out of his back pocket. "Uh, it looks like they came into LaGuardia on Delta flight 9241, which arrived at 12:41."

Reid added this information to his timeline. He took a few steps back and evaluated his work. "And let's say that they got to the hotel around one-thirty, taking into account the time it took to get their luggage and traffic between Queens and Manhattan. That means that the person who gave the unsub the key to Lena's room had about two hours to get it to him."

"Not necessarily." Morgan crossed his arms over his chest. "The NFL draft is about as exciting as watching grass grow. The Patriots only picked four times on Saturday – there would have been plenty of chances to get up and leave the building for five or ten minutes without being noticed."

"Ugh." Reid sighed and flopped back into his chair. "How go the interviews?"

Morgan shook his head. "These people… It's like trying to get blood from a turnip. You'd think they'd be a little more forthcoming, considering that one of their own is missing." He shrugged. "They've closed ranks."

"Have you ruled anyone out?"

"The GM – his name's Paul Greene – seems clean. Plus, from what I know about his job, he was probably too preoccupied with the draft to orchestrate a kidnapping. He also only worked for the Patriots for a year. I don't think he had much of a relationship of any type with Lena." He glanced at the analog clock on the far wall. "And I should be getting back. Emily and I are going to interview the media relations intern. Actually, I came to get you. I was hoping you could watch him, see if his behavior gave anything away. Hotch and Rossi are talking Greene's assistants right now."

"Sure." He followed Morgan back to interrogation rooms. Prentiss and J.J. were waiting for them outside the room, glancing over Ronnie's file. "He looks pretty nervous," Reid remarked, glancing through the window at the intern.

Prentiss frowned. "He looks like a good kid. He's probably just terrified to be involved in this mess at all."

Reid turned to J.J. "Lena's friend Nolee called me about a half hour ago. Apparently she got a letter today that she thinks was addressed in Lena's handwriting. The Boston field office is going to send it down here this afternoon. Will you let me know when it gets here?"

J.J. nodded and left the interrogation area as Morgan and Prentiss entered the room. Reid flipped through Ronnie's file. He seemed to be the exact opposite of Ryan. Whereas Ryan was composed even haughty, Ronnie was practically trembling in his seat, glancing around the room rather like a trapped rat.

According to the file, he was a sports management student at UMass Amherst. He had transferred to UMass Boston for the spring '09 semester, his final one, so that he could intern with the Patriots. He was supposed to walk in the Amherst graduation ceremony next month. Ronnie's grades were above average, A's and B's and he had been selected for the Patriots internship from a pool of over one hundred applicants. He came from an average, middle-class home, and seemed completely respectable. Reid turned to the window to watch the questioning.

Prentiss introduced herself and Morgan. "How oversees your internship, Ronnie?"

"Ryan," he managed to mutter, his voice tense.

"Ryan Hanson?"

He nodded. "He always is very busy though, so sometimes, when I have a question or need help, I go see Lena. Ryan doesn't have a whole lot of time for the interns."

"And Lena does?"

"Well, Lena's really busy too – I mean, she's the head of the department. But she has an open-door policy, and she encourages us to come check in with her, if she's not in a meeting or anything like that."

"So Lena's pretty helpful, hun?" Morgan asked.

"I guess so. But don't get me wrong. Ryan's not all bad. It was his idea that I come with the team to the draft."

"Oh?"

"Well, I'm interested in acquisitions too – you know, finding talent for the team and whatnot – so Ryan thought this would be a good experience for me. And I guess it would have been, if…"

Morgan laced his fingers together and set his hands on the table. "Look, Ronnie, we know that you went to the front desk again, we have you on the security tape. We also know that someone on the team gave the unsub a key to Lena's room. Why'd you give him the key? I thought Lena was helping you out at the Patriots."

Ronnie threw a frantic look around the room. "I didn't give anyone a key," he whispered. "My key wasn't working. I had to have it re-keyed."

"You're telling me you didn't ask the front desk for a key to Lena's room?"

Reid noticed that Ronnie was pinching his hands, wringing them together. He frowned.

"No," Ronnie said. "Why would I? I'm and intern – she's the head of the department. It would look really bad if anyone found out."

Prentiss and Morgan exchanged glances. That was the least of his worries.

"He's lying about the key," Reid said when the two agents left the interrogation room.

"Yeah, I know," Morgan replied. "But we can't prove it."

Prentiss shook her head. "I don't know guys. I agree, he was acting pretty jumpy, but he doesn't have a reason to set Lena up. I just don't think he's capable of this. I mean, he's just a kid."

"We've seen kids much younger than him kill without batting an eye," Morgan pointed out.

"I just don't get that vibe off of him," Prentiss replied.

* * *

Prentiss, Reid and Morgan returned to the conference room to find the rest of the team standing over the package that had arrived from the Boston field office. Inside was an evidence bag, sealed with red tape, containing Nolee's letter. In silence Rossi handed it to Reid. Lena's draft notes, collected at the crime scene, were among the evidence scattered around the table, and Reid now grabbed them as a point of reference.

"Is it her writing?" Morgan asked, leaning over his shoulder.

"Hold on," Reid growled, oblivious to the edge in his voice. He waved Morgan away, made uncomfortable by having people hovering around him. The size of the printing on the envelope was larger than that in her notes, so he couldn't use that as a reference point. Similarly, the address was written in all caps. He shuffled through the notes, looking for examples of the caps. Finally, satisfied with his results, he leaned back. "Yeah, I think it's hers."

"Are you sure?" Hotch asked, reaching for the letter.

"Look at the M and the E in Massachusetts. They're identical to the M and E here." Reid pointed to one of the pieces of legal paper. "And look at the center of the M and the way she writes the number 9 – both are consistent with the European style of writing. Given that she probably learned how to write from her European parents, I'd say with about eighty percent accuracy that Lena wrote this."

"Should we open it?" J.J. asked.

Rossi grabbed a pair of latex gloves from the box sitting on the table and passed them to Hotch. Once he had gloved up, Hotch gently broke the tape on the evidence bag and extracted the letter. He ripped the right edge of envelope off. The only thing inside the envelope was a delicate gold chair with a since charm on it. Hotch held it up. The chain was broken. The charm looked like a stylized Egyptian hieroglyphic or design.

"What is it?" he asked.

Reid cocked his head. "I think it's an eye of Horus."

Morgan turned to look at him. "What?"

"The eye of Horus, also called a _wedjet_, was one of the most common amulets used in mummification in Ancient Egypt. It was given to the dead to protect the journey into the underworld. It was also considered a symbol of good luck and many Egyptians wore one for protection while still alive."

"But why send it to Nolee?"

J.J. glanced at the whiteboard and flipped it back over to the side where she had posted the crime scene photos and the studio photo of Lena. "Look at this," she said, pointing to Lena's picture. "It looks like she has some sort of a necklace on."

Rossi scrutinized the picture. "I can't tell if she has this necklace on or not, but given what we know about the unsub, this is probably the same necklace."

Reid put on a latex glove and took the necklace from Hotch. Morgan shook his head. "So he makes Lena address the envelope to Nolee and rips her necklace off to send it to her friend. That fits with what he's done before."

"We should get this to the lab for a DNA test," Hotch said, returning the envelope to the evidence bag. "But I doubt he'd be stupid enough to lick it himself."

"He probably made Lena lick it," Rossi mused.

"I think the unsub is sending us a message," Reid said, turning the necklace over. "The eye of Horus is a symbol of protection and good luck. The fact that he took it from Lena suggests that he thinks she isn't protected – that she isn't safe. He wants us to know that he's taken away anything that might have kept her safe."

Prentiss eyed the necklace in Reid's fingers. "She isn't Egyptian, is she?" Reid shook his head. "Then do you think she wore it for good luck? Maybe it was just a unique necklace."

"I don't think so," Reid replied. "I noticed a number of books about Ancient Egypt at her house. I'm sure she knew the meaning behind it. And the unsub must too."

"So, what the unsub really is saying," Morgan said slowly, "is that there is nothing or no one who can help Lena."

Hotch nodded. "I think he's trying to tell us that he plans to kill her."

* * *

When the white noise began to subside and her vision started to clear, Lena discovered that her eyes were already half open. She blinked, overcome by competing senses of panic and disorientation. She had felt like this only once before, the morning of the Super Bowl. When she had first started working with individual franchises, the players had warned her about waking up in strange hotel rooms, unable to remember where they were or why they were there. Even Elliot had told her that her time would come – eventually she'd wake up and have no idea where she was. She had never really taken these claims seriously – she prided herself on being self aware.

But after spending the week of leading up to the Super Bowl attending media events during the day and attending parties on behalf of the team at night, she had woken up on the morning of February 1st anxious and completely lost. She was in Tampa, but she could have been in Mexico or Antarctica for all she knew. And as she lay in that foreign hotel bed, she felt the walls closing in on her and the oxygen leave the room.

She felt similarly anxious now and worse, she knew she was forgetting things. She seemed suspended in some sort of time warp and she floated in and out of consciousness. When she was awake, she struggled to remember. Sometimes she forgot her own name, her birthday, her address. Other times she forgot people, or events. She knew he was drugging her, to keep her quiet. And when she came to, something bad was going to happen. He wanted her to remember what he did to her. She was awake now and sure enough, she heard his heavy footfall, approaching her.

"Wake up, sleepy head."

She could smell the acrid scent of cigarette smoke. It turned her stomach and she closed her eyes, willing herself not to retch.

"Wake up!" He sat down on the mattress and blew smoke in her face.

She glared at him, and tried to pull away, but he had bound her arms to nearby posts, limiting her movement. "Why are you doing this?" she whispered.

He smiled at her. "I think you know why." He slowly began to roll her shirt up and pressed the cigarette against her skin. She winced, twisting away from him. "Where are you going?" he asked, laughing. He gripped her waist, holding her in place. "Do you know why I always use a knife?" With his free hand, he held up the knife he had brought to the mattress with him.

She shook her head, and she could feel tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. Up until this moment, he had touched her, he had violated her, he had hurt her, but she didn't really think he was going to kill her. But now, she stared into his eyes and she saw something cold, inhuman within them. And she realized that she was going to die.

Maybe this realization reflected in her expression because he smiled again, relishing her panic. "I use a knife because a gun is too impersonal. I could shoot you from across the room, or across the street and you'd never know who I was. But with a knife…" he paused, running the back side of the knife along her torso, his smile growing wider by the second. "With a knife, I get to look you in the eye the entire time."

He jabbed it into her body and she screamed, pain shooting through her. "Motherfucker!" she screamed, struggling in vain against the ropes that bound her arms. "You motherfucker! Do you think he's not looking for me? Every cop in the commonwealth of Massachusetts is out there looking for me. Aiden's going to find me! And when he does, he's going to blow your fucking brains out! You motherfucker!" She dissolved into tears, the pain only intensifying as she screamed at him.

"Aiden?" He laughed again and his voice grew cold. "He's dead. He's been dead for five months. Or did you forget that? Has all that valium made your brain go soft? Come on. Where's this brilliant media relations person I keep hearing about?"

Lena stopped struggling. Aiden was dead. _Aiden was dead_. She had a foggy memory of a cemetery in the snow…

Oh God.

"Are you going to kill me?" she whispered.

"Kill you? I'm just getting warmed up."

* * *

Reid's eyes flew open. He was bathed in sweat and the sound of his blood pounding in his ears all but obscured the sound of Morgan's snoring. The yellowish-orange light from the streetlamps filtered through the blinds into the room, casting eerie shadows on the walls. He sat up and checked the digital clock on the bedside table: 4:19.

He could hear the sounds of garbage men and car alarms outside, but it wasn't enough to expunge the screams from his mind. He had been dreaming again, but unlike his last dream, there was no park, no chess, no Lena. It had just been darkness and screaming. He had forced himself awake when he couldn't stand it any more. He sighed and went to the window, opening the blinds to watch a few taxis trolling the street. He leaned his head against the cool glass, trying to think.

It was times like this that he truly missed Gideon. Gideon had been the only person he could trust when he faced a conundrum like this one. He longed to pour out his concerns and fears to someone who wouldn't judge him or try to send him back to Quantico. Even a genius needed advice every once and a while.


	7. Offeratory

_**Standard disclaimers apply. As always, thank-you to my readers/reviewers! :D**_

_**CHAPTER SIX**_

That following morning, Reid met Paul Greene, Patriots general manager, at the restaurant in the lobby of the Hilton New York. It seemed like the best place to have a conversation without being noticed; the restaurant was hopping with morning brunch traffic. Paul was already waiting for him when Reid arrived in at the restaurant. He stood as Reid approached the table and shook his hand.

"Thanks for meeting me," Reid said as he sat down at the table.

"No problem. But I already talked to some of your colleagues; I don't think I can help you."

Reid shook his head. "This is off the record. I just need some information."

"About Lena?" Paul frowned. "I don't know her very well. I just started with the Pats this year. She was one of the people who interviewed me last year, but we didn't really spend much time together after that. We might check in every once and a while, but…"

Reid held up his hand to cut Paul off. "No, I actually have some football questions." He chuckled. "I don't really know that much about football – well, about sports at all – and I need some help trying to figure some stuff out."

"What sort of stuff?"

A waitress arrived at their table and Reid fell silent. He busied himself with the menu, ordering a coffee. Paul processed the young FBI's reaction, bemused. Reid sighed.

"Lena seems preoccupied with the fixing of the 1919 World Series, which led me to wonder if maybe she thought the Super Bowl was fixed. Her assistant, Alicia, said she was watching a lot of tape, and I thought she might be looking for clues."

"Are you implying that Lena was kidnapped because she thought someone threw the Super Bowl?"

Reid frowned. "I'm not implying anything. I just want some information. I asked Alicia if it was possible to throw the Super Bowl. She said was unamused, to say the least. I couldn't get a straight answer out of her."

"She's in PR. What do you expect?"

"I expect _you_ to give me a straight answer. I…my team can't find her if we keep on running into brick walls."

As if on cue, the waitress returned with Reid's coffee, giving Paul a moment to digest what Reid had said to him. As he had said, Paul hadn't been with the Patriots long, but in his short time with the team, one thing had become crystal clear: always protect the team. Even Lena, who fostered an air of perceived openness with the media, adhered to this rule. It only seemed like she was providing exclusives – nine time out of ten, a journalist would go home to write his piece only to discover that Lena hadn't given him anything useful. Answering the FBI's questions – more to the point, answering them honestly – seemed counterintuitive.

"You don't understand," Paul said when the waitress had left again.

"You're right, I don't. But I want to," Reid replied. "That's why I'm here. I don't know what Lena was thinking, but I need to. I need to understand what was going through her mind, what she was thinking about between February and last Saturday."

"If I say anything, it has to be off the record. We never had this conversation."

"Completely. This is for Lena, no one else."

Paul ran his fingers along his goatee, but Reid knew he was about to crack. He had been hedging his bets, hoping that Paul at least respected Lena enough to help her, even if she wasn't a good friend.

"What do you want to know?" Paul said at last and Reid released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Has anyone ever fixed a Super Bowl?"

"Depends on who you ask."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if you were to go down to the league offices on Park Avenue and talk to the commissioner – which I wouldn't recommend, by the way. He's kind of surly. And if you think Alicia's PR speak is a challenge, you'd find the commissioner an absolute nightmare. Everything out of his mouth is scripted. But if you _were_ to talk to him, he'd tell you that no NFL game has ever been fixed. Since 1920."

"That seems rather naive."

"Oh, it is. It's very rose-colored, and I think that, if pushed, just about everyone involved in the league would tell you otherwise. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The commissioner would admit that two games almost got thrown."

"Almost?"

"Yeah. The 1946 NFL Championship – the NFL didn't start holding the Super Bowl until the late sixties – and a game between the Oilers and the Steelers in 1971. But in each case the plans got uncovered, the NFL was dutifully outraged and a few perfunctory changes were made in an attempt to ensure it would never happen again."

"What type of changes?"

Paul shrugged. "In 1946? The league was struggling, there was a competing league with some good teams and the NFL needed to protect its image. So the commissioner made a big deal about ensuring honesty in the league and enacted some bylaws about punishing players and coaches involved in gambling. All very touchy-feely, all good image rehab."

"You people seem to spend more time working on your image than you do playing football," Reid noted dryly.

Paul laughed. "That's the big secret."

"So the party line is that no one has every fixed an NFL game. I sense a big but coming."

"You're right. There was an investigative journalist named Dan Moldea who published a book in the late eighties about the mob's involvement in fixing games. He claimed that upwards of seventy NFL games had been fixed and the conspiracy touched players, coaches, refs – everyone."

"Was he right?"

"Who knows? The mob, as I'm sure you're aware, is notoriously elusive. Do they have their fingers in football? Probably. After all, the rumor is that Jimmy Hoffa's buried in the endzone at Giants Stadium, not in the outfield at Yankees Stadium. It's so hard to prove. But you have to realize that when the book was published, everyone was hyper vigilant about pro athletes and gambling. The whole Pete Rose scandal was breaking at the same time and everyone was horrified that athletes would bet on games and even bet _against _themselves. And, of course, people with gambling debts often turn to the mafia for easy money."

"Until they loose it," Reid said. He leaned back in his chair, watching a family of tourists settle themselves at a table across the room. "Would Lena know about all of this? About the 1946 NFL Championship and this Dan Moldea?"

"I would be very surprised if she didn't. It's pretty much basic NFL knowledge and to be a woman and succeed in the boys club that is the NFL, she'd probably have to know everything. Franchise history and league history."

"Okay, fine. In the eighties people suspected that the mob was conspiring to throw NFL games. What about now? How often do people suspect that games are being fixed?"

"That's tough. Every so often, you have a group of people on the internet arguing that a game was fixed. Usually it's a group of angry fans who can't believe their team got beaten by such a bad opponent. And now that blogging is so common, the charges will occasionally spread around internet communities, sometimes get picked up by a columnist." He shrugged. "It's only in a very, very rare occasion that the NFL will take such an accusation seriously. And that's when someone comes out of the woodwork from one of the teams."

"The accusation would have to come from within the league?"

"More or less. You'd have to be pretty important to have the NFL listen to you if you didn't work for a franchise. Hell, you'd probably have to be someone pretty important within a franchise to get the NFL to take you seriously."

"Is Lena important enough?"

"Again, it would depend on who you talked to. But she had connections within the league, and they might have been enough to get someone to listen to her."

"Would Lena have gone to the league?"

Paul shook his head. "I don't know. I think she was too smart to show her hand like that. Especially if she wasn't sure. She didn't really like the commissioner, anyway. She used to work in the league offices under the old commissioner, and I think she really respected him. She might even have stayed with the league if he hadn't retired."

"What about within the team? Would she have talked to someone there?"

"I really don't know. In fact, I had no idea she was even looking in to this. This is the first I've heard about it."

Reid finished his coffee, now gone cold. "Say I needed some money and wanted to throw a game. How would I do it?"

"Depends. Are you a player, a coach, a ref or a third party?"

"Which would be easiest?"

Paul considered this for a moment. "Probably a player. You'd be able to influence the game most directly. If you played poorly, most people would just dismiss your performance as a bad game. If you're a coach or a ref or some third party, you'd probably need someone on the team to help you, at least to avoid detection. A coach might be able to give bad play calls, but a QB who wants to win might change the play on the field. Meanwhile, if a ref starts making too many questionable calls, someone might begin to wonder if there's something fishy going on."

"That's what I thought," Reid said. "So during the Super Bowl, did anyone play uncharacteristically poorly? Lena seemed rather interested in Ray DeSalle."

"Ray? Yeah, I guess Ray had a bad game, but he wasn't the only one. Our top running back only had a total of 54 yards for the entire game. We had linemen averaging two sacks a game who hardly got into the pocket. Our best safety had three picks in the AFC Championship game. The only thing he managed to get in the Super Bowl was a couple pass interference calls. Even Elliot had a bad game. It just wasn't our night."

"Elliot Mann? He had a bad game?"

Paul nodded. "He was completing around eighty percent of his passes by the end of the season, but only completed around fifty percent at the Super Bowl. For a Pro Bowl quarterback, that's pretty miserable. Actually, it's a pretty miserable stat for any professional QB."

"Do you think it's possible that someone threw that game?" Reid asked.

"Anything's possible, Dr. Reid. But I'd be surprised. I think we were just over confident and we didn't play well. It sucks, but it happens. Even to the best teams in the league."

* * *

Pondering his conversation with Paul, Reid walked slowly down Sixth, towards Radio City Music Hall, where the draft had been held that weekend. The Patriots had selected the Hilton New York in part because of its proximity to Radio City – less than three blocks away. Lena would have walked these same sidewalks Saturday evening, completely oblivious to what awaited her back at the hotel later that night. She probably had been joking with her fellow team officials, laughing as they discussed the afternoon's events. He paused on a street corner, imagining the group passing him.

They would have been rather proud of themselves and would have congratulated one another on a successful opening two rounds. At that moment, the future looked bright. They had come to New York, planning to draft four players on Saturday, two with their allocated picks and two more with picks secured during contract and free agent negotiations the month before. Mike, the head coach and Wallace, the owner would be quite pleased with them and Paul might even have felt rather smug, relieved that the first day of his first draft as the Patriots GM had gone so smoothly. Sunday's prospects looked just as hopeful and once the new rookies were integrated with the new free agents and the team's stalwart veterans, the Patriots were looking at an equally strong 2009 season, if not one that was even better than the last.

Already cheered by the energy of the group, Lena might even have forgotten her concerns about the Super Bowl and she might even have doubted herself. Maybe she, like all those angry fans on line, was just trying to rationalize the loss. Maybe she was wrong, reading too much into a series of coincidences. As they returned to the hotel and headed to the bar to blow of some of the steam, Lena might even have let her guard down, perhaps embarrassed that she had been so paranoid. Little did she know, a Judas was hidden in the group sharing drinks at the little table in the corner of the bar.

"Hey, did you see this?"

Reid turned. A man selling the _New York Post_ had set up his lorry of papers on the corner and he was holding a copy of the paper out to Reid. "See what?"

"This story. Man, I couldn't make up a story better than this. I mean, first that Patriots gal gets herself kidnapped and now it turns out that she and the quarterback were having an affair." The salesman shook his head. "This is just wild. No wonder they lost the Super Bowl – they had too much drama to play football."

"What?" Reid took the paper from the salesman's grasp.

"Hey, that's fifty cents."

Reid handed him a dollar. "Keep the change." He read through the story in a matter of seconds and could hardly believe a word of it.

_A report from a source close to the New England Patriots has disclosed that missing head of media relations, Lena Lopez has long been involved with team quarterback Elliot Mann. According to the anonymous source, Lopez perhaps began the relationship while Aiden Collister, her husband and a Massachusetts State Police Sergeant, was still alive. Since Collister's death last December, the alleged relationship has gathered steam, despite Mann's well-publicized romance with actress Danielle Sand. This report lends credence to the rumors surrounding the Patriots camp suggesting that Mann's poor performance at the Super Bowl was due to amorous distractions. _

Reid shook his head, staring at the tabloid. And just when he thought he was getting somewhere.

* * *

**_Thank-you for bearing with me for this chapter. I know it's not the most interesting of stuff, but I promise, it's important. Thanks! :)_**


	8. Sanctus

_**Standard disclaimers apply. As always, thank-you to my readers and reviewers! I love hearing from you guys. :) **_

_**CHAPTER SEVEN**_

Reid arrived back at the precinct headquarters to find the rest of the team already assembled. He covertly checked his watch and found that it was after ten; he hadn't realized he had been gone for so long.

"Nice of you to join us," Rossi drawled. J.J. and Hotch exchanged disconcerted glances

"Where have you been?" Morgan demanded.

Reid shrugged, throwing the paper down onto the table. He had hoped to enter the room with the case-breaking news, but now, with five pairs of eyes fixed on him with varying degrees of irritation and concern, he decided to hold off on his announcement until he wasn't so under their microscope. "Research," he muttered, slumping into one of the faux-leather swivel chairs surrounding the conference room table.

He was rather annoyed that the team had decided to make such a commotion about his absence, though, in retrospect, he probably shouldn't have been so surprised. Since joining the BAU, he had been seen as the _boy_ genius, rather like the Doogie Howser of profiling. People seemed to naturally want to protect him and coddle him, as they would a child. Morgan still called him "Kid," even though Reid would be twenty-eight this fall. And since his own kidnapping at the hands of Tobias Hankel two years ago, the team was even more protective of him. Did they really think he was so delicate? Moreover, couldn't a guy slip off to do a covert interview by himself without catching flack and worried looks from everyone else?

Morgan's phone rang, cutting through the tension. Reid tried not to look as relieved as he felt, but he really would have to treat Garcia to lunch or something when they got back to Quantico. Would she consider the FBI cafeteria tacky? Morgan answered the phone and put Garcia on speaker phone.

"I have a bone to pick with you, Reid," she said by way of greeting. Reid frowned and decided he'd have to rethink that whole lunch idea after all.

"Why?" he asked tentatively.

"You have to warn me when you send me awful videos like that!"

"We've seen worse," Hotch said softly.

Garcia grunted. "Maybe so. But I still like a little bit of warning," she said.

"What'd you find for us, baby doll," Morgan urged. This was their third day in New York and if Garcia had something that would help them wrap up this case soon and get them home, then Morgan had little patience for small talk.

Garcia tapped away at the computer. "Okay. I didn't get much off the picture itself – there isn't much on here to give me a location. The camera is trained on the room and the windows are too far away to show much of anything. But, I _was_ able to isolate some scratch sound." She played the recording for the team – it sounded like a series of high-pitched whistles and clattering.

"A train," Prentiss said.

"Not just a train – a whole rail yard," Garcia replied, triumphant.

Rossi stared across the room at a map of the Five Burroughs and New Jersey. "How many rail yards are there in the New York Metro area?" he said, thinking out loud.

"Too many," Garcia said. "But, I started thinking. He didn't go that far outside of Manhattan. He couldn't have, given that he was sending out pictures by three or four in the morning. So I factored in the regularity and volume of the train whistles as well as the distance from Midtown and I think I know where she is." She paused for dramatic effect. "I think the unsub's keeping her in Hoboken."

"New Jersey?" J.J. asked.

"Yup. There's a huge rail yard that backs up along the south side of the town. It looks like a large number of the trains coming out of Manhattan run through Hoboken. Plus, it would only take around fifteen to twenty minutes to drive out there from Manhattan, especially in the middle of the night," Garcia added.

Morgan nodded, thinking. "Okay. I'll go tell Ortega – let's see if we can get some men out there, canvassing the area. Maybe they know someone or saw something. Thanks, baby girl."

"Any time."

During the conversation with Garcia, Prentiss had sat down next to Reid and began to look at the paper he had brought with him. She now turned to him. "Is this today's?"

He nodded. "I picked it up on my way in."

"I can see why," she replied, handing it to Hotch. Rossi read the article over Hotch's shoulder.

"How did we miss this?" J.J. asked, when Hotch had passed the paper to her. "We stood in her office and talked to him. Nothing. He certainly didn't act like they were in a relationship."

Reid thought back to the interview, reevaluating it with this new information. "He made sure that we knew they were just friends, remember, J.J.? When we asked him why he got a photo."

J.J. squinted, remembering. "Yeah. You know, he didn't seem all that shaken, given that he had just received a photo of his kidnapped friend – or girlfriend. Either way, wouldn't you be a little more panicked if someone you know closely had been kidnapped?"

Reid frowned. "Right. It didn't even cross my mind. I was busy trying to figure out why Lena was obsessed with the number 87, and then the news of the abduction broke on ESPN and I didn't pay any attention to Elliot." He hit the table with his hand. "Damn it," he growled uncharacteristically.

The other agents shared worried looks. J.J. gently touched his shoulder. "Reid, it's okay. We would have figured it out."

"That's not the point. The point is, we had him. He looked me right in the eye and told me that he had no idea what was going on, when he probably orchestrated this entire thing."

"That's a leap," Rossi said.

Hotch sat down on Reid's other side. "I think you might be jumping to conclusions, Reid," he said softly. Reid seethed, but said nothing.

Morgan retuned to the conference room. "So, Ortega's on the line with the Hoboken PD and the Jersey state police…" He paused. "What's going on?"

"Our victim has made the news again," Rossi said flatly, holding up the _Post_.

"How?"

"Apparently, she and the star quarterback were engaged in a steamy love affair." Rossi crossed the room and gave Morgan the paper.

Morgan read the article, then looked over at J.J. "How is it possible for someone no one can find to generate so much press?"

"The _Post_ is a glorified tabloid masquerading as a legitimate news source," J.J. replied, her gaze inching towards Reid. "For all we know, they might have made this up to sell papers on a Wednesday morning." She shrugged.

Hotch turned to Morgan, a frown pulling at his brow. "Who does it list as the source?"

"It doesn't. It just says 'a source close to the New England Patriots,'" Morgan read out loud.

Hotch sighed. "J.J., see if you can meet with the reporter. I don't know if he'll give you his source, but it's worth a try. Dave," he continued, swiveling in his chair to look at Rossi, "I think we're also doing to have to talk to Elliot Mann. I hate to send anyone back up to Boston, though. We can't waste time traveling."

"We could send the jet for him. If the Boston field office could bring him in, I could fly up there and pick him up." Rossi paused, checking the clock. "We could be interviewing him before dinner."

"It's our only choice, Hotch," Morgan said. "If he's involved in this, we've got to talk to him as soon as possible."

Hotch nodded. "You're right, of course. Okay, Dave, get in contact with the Boston field office and head up there right away. Morgan and Prentiss, I want you out canvassing Hoboken with Ortega." The team dispersed, J.J. and Rossi already on their phones, negotiating their various meetings. Hotch turned his attention to Reid once more.

"Where's your mind on this?" he asked. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm not sure," Reid admitted. "I just can't believe I didn't pick up on anything when J.J. and I talked to him on Monday."

"You're not psychic, Reid. Stop beating yourself up."

Reid shook his head. "I went to see Paul Greene this morning – that's where I was, at the hotel. I think Lena thought someone threw the Super Bowl, so I wanted to find out if it was possible."

"What did he say?"

"He didn't say it wasn't impossible, but he didn't seem to think it happened last February. But he did say that Elliot had very poor numbers."

"Did Lena suspect Elliot?"

"I don't think so. Look." Reid pulled the books he had taken from Lena's house from his messenger bag. "See? She circled every page with the number 87 in it." He flipped open the NFL almanac to show Hotch.

"Where did you get this?"

Reid ducked his head, avoiding his superior's eyes. "From her house," he muttered. "I know," he added, before Hotch could chastise him. "You don't have to say anything. Just focus on the bigger picture."

"Okay, so she wanted someone to know about number 87. That's not Elliot."

"No. That's Ray DeSalle, a receiver. I think she thought DeSalle was the one who threw the game. She didn't suspect Elliot."

Hotch leaned back in his chair, paging through the book as he processed Reid's news. "But you said Elliot had bad numbers. I vaguely remember that. He didn't seem like the same player he had been all season. Maybe she had it wrong? Could Elliot have been the person throwing the game? Assuming, of course, that the game was fixed at all." He rose out of his chair and began to pace the room.

"Okay. Here's a scenario. Lena and Elliot are having an affair and he starts getting antsy, worried that his official girlfriend, the actress, is going to find out. Then, Lena happens to mention to him her suspicions. Maybe she mentions DeSalle, maybe she doesn't. Whatever the case, Elliot panics and decides that he has the perfect opportunity to get rid of her when she's at the draft, which would solve the love triangle too."

"Why would Elliot throw the Super Bowl?" Reid asked. "And isn't it convenient that this story breaks now?" he motioned to the paper that Morgan had left on the conference room table.

"Well…we've said from the beginning that the unsub had help within the team contingency here in New York. Maybe that person decided to roll over on Elliot, turning our attention away from him. If anything, this story tells me that we've got him nervous."

"Ronnie Taylor was pretty nervous when Prentiss and Morgan interviewed him yesterday," Reid said. "Prentiss said she didn't think he was a suspect, but I don't know. He's minoring in journalism at UMass – I'm sure he'd know the logistics of tipping off a tabloid. He's working in media relations too. He'd know the furor this revelation would set off for the team and for us."

"Even if Ronnie was giving up Elliot to save himself, we still have too many questions."

"I feel like, if you're going to throw a game like the Super Bowl, you're not just going to do it because you can," Reid said. "When I was talking to Paul, he made it sound like most people throw a game to influence gambling results. You don't wake up one morning and think, 'hum, let's see if I can throw the Super Bowl.' You wake up and you think, 'oh my God, I owe my bookie half a million dollars and if I don't pay him, the mob's going to come after me. I can make some quick money betting against myself in the Super Bowl.'"

Hotch nodded. "The Patriots were the heavy favorites coming into the Super Bowl."

"That's what J.J. told me on the way down here yesterday," Reid replied. "So maybe Elliot needed money, so he threw the game. Then, when the opportunity to get rid of Lena presented itself, Elliot asked Ronnie to help him, because Ronnie would have access to Lena that Elliot wouldn't. Plus, Elliot would immediately be suspected, while Ronnie might not be, which also explains why Elliot planned this to play out in New York. We wouldn't consider him a suspect because he was in Boston, cozy in his own bed when Lena was taken."

"But Ronnie panics and leaks the story of Elliot and Lena's affair to the _Post_, thereby throwing us onto Elliot's trail and off of his own." Hotch sighed. "But who hired the unsub?"

"I'll call Garcia back and have her look into Elliot and Ronnie's backgrounds," Reid said. Hotch left the room to see if either the NYPD or his agents had any updates and Reid dialed Garcia's number.

"I see I'm popular today," Garcia said when they had connected. "I was just about to call you."

"Oh? Were you going to chew me out some more for sending you the unsub's video?"

Reid could all but hear Garcia's eyes rolling. "No, Mr. Smartie-pants. Kevin finished watching the videos on the CD you sent him."

"Hi, Dr. Reid," Kevin said, coming on the line.

"Reid's just fine, Kevin."

"Well, uh, _Reid_, I watched Ray DeSalle in particular, like you wanted me too. He had a crappy game, that's for sure."

"I sense a but."

"But, it didn't look all that deliberate. I mean, he might be a pretty good actor, but he didn't seem too thrilled that he kept missing passes."

"What about Elliot Mann?"

"The quarterback? He had an equally terrible day."

"Did _his_ performance seem deliberate?"

"Honestly, it's hard to tell, with everyone wearing helmets. And this is team footage, so the camera man wasn't trying to get shots of faces anyway. Sorry I couldn't be of more help."

"It's fine. Garcia, are you still there?"

"Yes, sir."

Reid wrinkled his brow at Garcia's use of "sir," but didn't comment. "I need you to look into the backgrounds of Elliot Mann and Ronnie Taylor."

"Am I looking for anything specific?"

"Just keep your eyes open for anything that doesn't seem right," Reid replied.

"Okay. I'll let you know what I find."

Reid hung up and swiveled in his chair a few rotations, thinking. The news of Lena's relationship with Elliot angered him, because it didn't make sense. He didn't want to believe that Lena would cheat on her husband – the thought made her less sympathetic. Maybe their relationship started after Aiden's death, because Lena was more vulnerable. That made a little more sense. Elliot, the star quarterback, used to getting everything he wanted, came to Lena when she was mourning her husband and initiated the affair. When she got too clingy…

But he hadn't gotten the impression from anyone he had talked to about Lena that she was clingy. Ultra-organized, yes. Maybe a little rigid in disciplining her staff, but clingy? Nolee had called her "prone to hyperbole." Did that equate to "clingy"? He frowned. Maybe he wanted to believe he knew Lena better than he did. Who's to say she wasn't having an affair with Elliot, maybe even demanding that he leave his girlfriend for her.

The truth was, he didn't _want _her to care about the quarterback, because it was so clichéd. He had hoped that maybe, despite her chosen career, she wasn't just another bimbo bowled over by rippling muscles. So much for that theory. Here he was, thinking she was so clever, leaving clues for him, leading him to a huge scandal that would rock the NFL, when she probably was completely wrong. She was probably just another one of those fans that Paul had mentioned, creating a conspiracy because she couldn't believe her beloved team – scratch that, her beloved _quarterback_ – had just played a shitty game. She was stupid, she fell in love with a man who merely wanted a little something extra on the side, and now it had probably gotten her killed.

* * *

Standing in front of 1211 6th Avenue, headquarters of the _New York Post_,J.J. was mentally congratulating herself on having the foresight to bring her woolen pea coat with her. Though it was early May, the remnants of a winter storm seemed to have settled over the city, bringing with it the frigid winds that whistled through the streets and whipped around skyscrapers with undeniable vengeance. The grey clouds that had circled overhead since she and Reid arrived yesterday were growing darker and more ominous by the hour. Meteorologists were predicting heavy rains by the end of the week.

J.J. hugged her coat tighter to her body, tying to loiter while pretending not to loiter at all. Mick Evans, _Post _reporter extraordinaire had promised her twenty minutes of nearly undivided attention, as long as she didn't mind watching him wolf down a hot dog or two. She had a hard time believing that a reporter from the _Post_ was really all that busy, given that so much of what they wrote was merely rumor mongering. How long did it take to flush out gossip into five hundred words?

With her FBI crudentials, J.J. wasn't used to being given the brush, so when Evans promised to meet her outside the _Post_'s editorial headquarters on his lunch break, she had been caught so off guard that she agreed. She should have belabored the point more, mentioning the words "FBI" and "kidnapping investigation" a few more times to negotiate a longer – or perhaps more conventional – meeting. But, she reminded herself, for someone who worked for the _Post_, this might actually be considered conventional.

Just as she was about to whip out her cell and call Evans, to find out if he had stood her up, a rather round man approached her, similarly wrapped in a winter coat, a jaunty newsboy's cap perched on his balding head.

"Agent Jareau?"

"You must be Mick Evans." J.J. shook his hand. "Thanks for meeting me."

"I've got to be honest – this is the first time I've spoken with an FBI agent. I lucked out to get such a beautiful one."

J.J. jammed her hands deep into her pockets. "If you're trying to flatter me into forgetting to tell you that this conversation is off the record, it's not going to work."

"Beauty and brains." Evans shook his head. "I'm in the wrong business. Okay, fine. This if off the record. What can I do for you?"

"I'm here to talk to you about your article on Lena Lopez and Elliot Mann."

Evans smirked and walked away from J.J., in the direction of a hot dog vendor on the corner of 6th and 48th. "That's a very popular story, Miss Jareau. Over a million hits today already."

"I've got to ask, Mr. Evans, who's you source for this story?"

"Now what kind of reporter would I be, agent, if I gave up my sources to the FBI at the drop of the hat? I have a reputation to maintain, you know."

"We're trying to solve a kidnapping. The person who leaked that story to you might be involved in the disappearance."

"I don't know if you realize this, but New York has a shield law."

"I'm not asking you to testify about your source in open court, Mr. Evans. I'm asking you to tell me who leaked the story. A woman's life is on the line here."

Evans paid for his hot dog. "I'm not going to reveal my source on this, Miss Jareau. I will tell you that he came highly recommended."

J.J. frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

He shrugged, chewing. "Contrary to what you believe, I try not to just run with rumor. I checked up on him, make sure he's legit. The papers up in Boston vouch for him. Plus, the story was already on the 'Net."

"You reported a story already broken on the Internet?" J.J. raised an eyebrow.

"It broke on a little Patriots blog. No one in New York reads it, and it probably wouldn't be on anyone's radar. I just sort of brought the story to everyone's attention." He smiled.

"What's the name of the blog?"

"Patriots Reign. Look it up." He checked his watch. "I gotta run, anyway. Good luck on your investigation or whatever." With that, Evans turned and disappeared back into the building, leaving J.J. out in the cold.


	9. Libera Me

**_Standard disclaimers apply. As always, a big thank-you to my readers, reviewers and followers! Thank-you so much for you comments and support. :)_**

Say a prayer to yourself  
He says, close you eyes  
Sometimes it helps  
And then I get a scary thought  
That he's here means he's never lost

-Rihanna, "Russian Roulette"

_**CHAPTER EIGHT**_

Elliot Mann sat under the unforgiving lights in a nondescript NYPD interrogation room, watching the seconds tick by on the clock above the door. He ran a hand through his hair, replaying the steps that had brought him here.

This time, it was his agent, Vinnie Franz, who woke him with news of Lena, early this morning.

"Is there something you're not telling me?"

Elliot blinked at the clock on his bedside table. He usually allowed himself to sleep in during the brief off season, at least later than five in the morning and the early phone call caught him off guard, leaving him disoriented.

"What?" he mumbled. Vinnie was one of those people who seemed to run on coffee and cigarettes; he was alert at every hour of the day or night. This wasn't the first time that Elliot wondered if Vinnie ever slept.

"I didn't realize you were screwing Lena Lopez too."

"I'm screwing who now?" Elliot sat up in bed in an attempt to prevent himself from falling asleep again.

"Lena Lopez. It would have been nice if you had mentioned this before all the shit hit the fan."

"Who told you I'm sleeping with Lena? That's bullshit. I'm not sleeping with Lena."

"According to the _New York Post_, you are."

"What?" he asked again, wondering if he was still dreaming.

Vinnie sighed. Perpetually impatient, Vinnie always assumed that his clients could read his mind. He always seemed rather irritated when they didn't. "It's in the morning edition – you and Lena have been having an affair, possibly since before her husband died."

"That's a lie. Who's their source?"

"They don't list one."

"The _Post_'s a hack tabloid."

"Unfortunately for us, it's a highly read hack tabloid. And I've already been getting calls to confirm the story. Gillette's probably getting the same thing. So from now on, we're on damage control red alert." Vinnie paused and in the background, Elliot could barely make out the staccatoed taping of pen against granite counter. "It's probably not on the west coast yet," he mused, more to himself than Elliot. "It's only two in the morning over there. We need to get you and Danielle out, doing _anything_, so everything appears normal."

"You want me to go to LA?" Danielle had returned to California on Monday to continue shooting her latest film, some sort of period drama that was designed to win her an Oscar. Or at the very least a Golden Globe, though he knew Danielle would never settle for such second-class hardware. He didn't particularly want to be around Danielle right now. She hadn't been all that happy with how preoccupied he had become with Lena's disappearance and now that the entire eastern seaboard apparently thought he was sleeping with Lena, Danielle would be a downright nightmare.

"If only it were fall," Vinnie continued. "You two could go to a USC game or something – it'd be fantastic press. Mmmm, maybe a baseball game – the Angels? No, the Red Sox can't seem to beat the Angels in the playoffs – might ruffle some feathers. The Dodgers, then. Okay, I'll see about getting some tickets for tonight, I've got a client who owes me a favor."

"Vinnie?" Elliot interjected, interrupting his agent's soliloquy. "Wouldn't it look kind of suspicious if I just up and took off for LA?"

"Why? You didn't take her, did you?" He chuckled at the very idea. The silence that hung between them became tenser as it dragged on. "You…you didn't did you?" Vinnie repeated, his bravado evaporated.

"No, I didn't _take_ her, Vinnie," Elliot snapped. "I'm not going to LA."

"This is going to be a PR nightmare, Elliot. You're not even going to try and fight it?"

"There's nothing to fight. It's not true. Instead of trying to make this look like it never happened, you should start finding out if we had a case for a libel suit." Most agents, Vinnie included, had law degrees. He might as well put it to good use.

"You're the boss, El," Vinnie said, though Elliot could tell, from his tone of voice, that Vinnie certainly didn't agree with him.

He knew, as he hung up a few minutes later, that he'd be spending the day waiting. It was only a matter of time before the police came to interview him again, though now – in retrospect – he hadn't expected to be hauled to New York to face the FBI again.

As he waited, he read the article online. Then he read it again, still in shock that someone would make such a claim and that the _Post _would publish it. Danielle called and he ignored it, letting her go to voice mail again, and again, and again. After a while, the calls stopped and he was left in silence.

Elliot avoided attention like the plague, ironic given his iconic status as starting quarterback for a Super Bowl-caliber team. He often had wished that he could play football – and play it well – without the entirety of New England walking around with number 15 jerseys with his name on the back. As the middle child of five, he was used to being overlooked and had grown comfortable with anonymity when, at the age of twenty three, he was thrust into the spotlight. The starting quarterback had gone down with a serious injury, midway through the second quarter, what would turn out to be a career-ending broken leg. It was Elliot's second year in the league and he had played in a handful of games, most of the preseason exhibitions or blowouts. He would never forget the panic of that first play, an all out blitz with the entire defensive line coming straight towards him – there wasn't a guy under 275. And he also wouldn't forget how sweet it felt to throw that first touchdown pass, or the second, or the third. When they won that game, he thought he would never be happier.

But with that victory, and those that followed, came undesired fame. He hadn't expected to ever be this renowned. He was a fifth-round draft pick, low for a USC quarterback. He had never dreamed that he'd be playing in the Super Bowl or that he could barely walk down Newbury Street without getting mobbed by fans. He was uncomfortable with this scrutiny and tried to avoid it. That was why he, unlike most successful quarterbacks, didn't appear in a lot of ads and commercials. The only time he wanted to be watched was when he was out on the field.

That's why he liked Lena so much – she seemed to be the only person at Gillette who understood that he baulked under media lights. She was quiet, the person who simply listened while others talked themselves hoarse. He appreciated that too – everyone in professional football wanted to talk, but no one wanted to listen. He found himself drawn to her office because she always had time for him – not that that was special, everyone had time for _the_ Elliot Mann – but she didn't treat him differently because he was famous. She was honest – honesty was another rare commodity in the NFL. And she didn't find it so ridiculous that he preferred to be home, reviewing tape or just watching a Celtics game on TV instead of out at the club, like so many of his teammates.

She was withdrawn too, she explained. She blamed it on being raised by family friends with three children of their own after her parents died. They didn't really have time for their own kids, how could they have time for her too? She had grown up amusing herself, used to being ignored. Plus, when she went to school she was teased about her accent, which, up until she went to boarding school across the river, in Cambridge, was Russian, learned from her mother. She understood how important it was to protect yourself, to conceal your true self, from others, how sometimes that was the only way to stay sane.

Sometimes, he thought, Lena knew him better than anyone. Certainly better than Danielle, who, he was fairly certain, only dated him because it was expected of her: hot young actresses dated hot young football players. It seemed like a Madison Avenue version of the American dream, where everyone was just a little richer, just a little more beautiful, just a little more perfect than the average person would ever be.

Agent Sawyer came around eleven, apologetic but still slightly star-struck. "I've got to take you in," he murmured, as though he was embarrassed. Elliot couldn't tell if the agent was embarrassed to have to be standing on his doorstep or if he was embarrassed because he was at the beck and call of the BAU. Sawyer had come in an unmarked car with Massachusetts license plates – clearly he was aware that a government car might attract unwanted attention.

"Am I under arrest?" Elliot asked.

"No, of course not," Sawyer said. His answer came too quickly, but it could have just been nerves. "The guys from Quantico just want to talk to you again."

Elliot felt genuinely sorry for the guy, forced as he was to pick up football players from their Back Bay residences in order to convey them to…where? "Am I going to New York?"

Sawyer nodded. "Sorry. I can't legally make you go, of course, but it would be in your best interest to just go. Don't make this any messier than it already is."

Elliot rarely heard such sensible, cut-to-the chase advice, and he appreciated Sawyer's candor, so he went with the FBI field office at Government Center. And he went with Agent Rossi, when the man appeared to spirit him off to New York on the BAU's sleek private jet. Elliot was unimpressed with this physical representation of his tax dollars and he mused on whether or not his income taxes alone would be enough to finance the plane. At they very least, they'd pay for fuel.

The flight, though short, was exceedingly awkward. Elliot could feel Rossi's eyes on him, analyzing him, and he resented it. Maybe it was because he had barely passed his psych 101 class (only after several calls from the head coach, growing increasingly frantic as the semester progressed, did his professor begrudgingly award him a passing grade of D-, allowing him to maintain academic eligibility) but Elliot had always considered psychology something of a collection of crackpot theories, obsessed with perverting even the most innocuous of behaviors. In retrospect, maybe that's why he practically flunked the class in the first place. Whatever the case, he didn't put much stock in psychology and he resented the idea that someone could tell anything about him based on his behavior.

He knew what Rossi wanted to know, and he took bittersweet pleasure in refusing to give it to him. He had no interest explaining himself to any of the BAU agents, nor should he have to. After all, it wasn't his fault some douchbag at the _Post_ decided to print lies about him.

He had been shown to this interrogation room and left alone with a water bottle, which he was now idly rolling back and forth along the Formica-topped table. He had been here for at least and hour and he wondered if, perhaps, the agents were trying to unnerve him by making him wait. The very naivety of the idea amused him. When you make your living trying to avoid getting mowed down by 300-pound linebackers and knowing you risk your job security every time you take a snap, waiting for a few tardy FBI agents to ask you a few questions seems like a walk in the park.

He glanced up at the mirror that no doubt served as a window into the room and smirked, confident that at least one of the agents was standing behind it, trying to glean whatever hoodoo they could from his actions. If they wanted the smug, self-assured quarterback, that's what they'd get. If dealing with the media had taught him anything, it was how to create a façade to hide behind.

* * *

On the opposite side of the mirror, Spencer Reid stood, hands in his pockets, watching Elliot fidget with the water bottle. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. Morgan and Prentiss had yet to come back from canvassing Hoboken, and Hotch wanted Morgan to question Elliot. In fact, if Hotch had his druthers, Reid wouldn't be sitting in on the interrogation at all. But Reid wanted to be in the room with Elliot, wanted to look into the quarterback's eyes and figure out why he didn't seem to care that Lena was gone.

People like Elliot were all the same. They only cared about themselves and they even took a strange pride in hurting "the little guy." Though he tried to forget the way the jocks and the popular, pretty girls had humiliated him in high school, he could never completely push the experiences aside. Morgan was right, Reid did have an elephant's memory when it came to his high school torture. And now, staring at Elliot, Reid felt all that bottled anger and angst bubbling dangerously close to the surface.

The whole story seemed cribbed from a bad episode of some teenage television drama like _Beverly Hills 90210_ or, what was everyone watching now, _The OC_? This is the type of thing that played out in the halls of a high school: quarterback dates bookworm in order to humiliate her at the prom. It was so clichéd that Reid could hardly believe it. Weren't they all adults here? Hadn't they left high school behind?

How could he sit there, screwing around with that damn water bottle, like he did this every day? How could he not even care that she was gone? Even if he had just been using Lena for some easy sex, she was still a _person_. He had stood toe-to-toe with some of the most evil people in recent history, yet it was always the small cruelties that stuck him the strongest. Maybe he sensed kindred spirits.

"Hey man, didn't your mama ever tell you not to frown so hard? Your face'll freeze like that."

Reid turned away from the window and managed a forced smile for Morgan. "How'd it go in Hoboken?"

Morgan shook his head. "Do you know how many people there are in Hoboken?" Reid opened his mouth to reply, but Morgan didn't let him. "I'll give you a hint – a lot. And they're not very helpful."

"I see Manhattan hospitality extends to their neighbors to the west," Reid replied. "Are you up to doing another interview?"

"That's the quarterback, hun?" Morgan glanced over Reid's shoulder at Elliot. "I try not to get emotional about sports, but they sure embarrassed my Bears last season. I'm not sure I can stay partial."

Reid blanched. He needed Morgan's less emotional responses to counteract his own reactions, which often came from the gut.

"I'm joking, Reid," Morgan said flatly. "Come on, kid, let's get started."

Elliot looked up as the two agents entered the room, but if he was nervous or irritated, he didn't show it. "Agent Reid, good to see you again," he said, smiling slightly.

Reid said nothing and kept his face expressionless. Morgan introduced himself and they both sat down.

"So, you're fond of Lena Lopez," Morgan said once he had settled himself and set a file folder on the table.

Elliot met Morgan's gaze and refused to look away. "That depends on your definition of _fond_," he replied. His voice was cool and he spoke slowly, annunciating each word. His expression was brazen, as if he was daring Morgan to get angry.

Morgan didn't take the bait. "Come on. We both know what I'm talking about, so let's cut to the chase."

Elliot said nothing.

"I don't get it," Morgan continued. "You're dating this beautiful actress and you still want to have an affair with some front office staffer?"

"Lena's not just 'some front office staffer,'" Elliot said.

Reid reached for the file and pulled out a picture of Lena. He set it on the table in front of Elliot. "I see the appeal. She's cute." He shrugged. "But an actress?" He raised an eyebrow, letting his expression say the rest. After all, Elliot wasn't the only person in the room who had kissed a celebrity.

"She's not Danielle Sand," Morgan added. "I mean, the choice is kind of obvious. So you can see, Mr. Mann, why we're a bit concerned to learn about your affair in light of our current situation."

"Just tell us where she is," Reid said softly. "If you can help us, we can help you."

Elliot shook his head. "I have no idea where she is. If I knew, we wouldn't be sitting here, wasting our time. I'd get her myself."

Morgan cocked his head, considering the quarterback. "What, are you having second thoughts about having her abducted? Has this gotten too ugly for you?" He opened the file again and pulled out stills from the video the unsub sent. "Look at these! Look at what your man is doing to her! Did you expect him just to murder her in her hotel room? Did you know what he was like when you hired him?" He slapped the photos on the table. "Don't look at Reid, he's not going to help you. Right here. Look at these! Did you know that he was going to torture her and rape her?"

"I would never pay someone to do this or to kill anyone," Elliot said, his voice tight. "And I certainly would never let someone do this to Lena. She's like my little sister." He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "We weren't having an affair. That story in the _Post_ is a lie." At the sight of pictures, the color had drained from his face.

Reid and Morgan exchanged glances. "Why would someone tell the _Post _that you were having an affair?"

"I don't know," Elliot muttered. "Look, anyone who knows Lena knows that this is a bunch of bullshit anyway. She was devastated when Aiden died. She wasn't going to start having an affair with anyone, least of all someone like me."

"What do you mean?" Morgan pressed.

Reid frowning, thinking back to what he observed in Lena's house. "She wouldn't have dated you anyway, regardless of Aiden."

Elliot nodded. "She liked to keep her work and her private life separate. People liked to tease her about Aiden, asking her why she married a cop when she could have had her pick of football players. She always said that she talked about football all day long. She didn't want to talk about it all night when she went home."

"Then why the story?" Morgan asked.

"I don't know," Elliot repeated. "All I know is that it's not true. I'm not having an affair with Lena and I would never have her killed. I…" He stopped and shook his head, as if he had caught himself before blurting out something. He fell silent.

Morgan leaned back in his chair, scrutinizing Elliot, looking for cracks in the veneer. "Okay. Thank-you for your time."

When they had left the interrogation room, Morgan turned to Reid. "What do you think?"

"As much as I hate to admit it, I think he's telling the truth. He didn't look very good when you showed him those pictures."

"I noticed that as well."

The interview left Reid unsettled, because he should have realized that Lena would have wanted her life like her house – neat and compartmentalized. She wouldn't have pursued a relationship that would have upset that balance. Was he getting too emotionally involved? He chastised himself to focus. He had to focus and maybe that mean stepping away.

"Where does this leave us?"

"Right back where we started," Reid replied. His phone beeped – Garcia calling him back.

"I looked into those people you called about," she said. "First of all, Elliot Mann makes more in interest on his savings account in a year than I make on my entire salary."

"But…?" Reid asked hopefully.

"But apart from paying the gross national product of a small Asian country for parking in Back Bay, he's clean," Garcia replied. "There's no suspicious spending of any kind. His credit is good, he has no suspicious debts, doesn't look like he's been making any payments to a bookie or a sadistic kidnapper or anything like that. In fact, for a football player, he doesn't seem to be much of a big spender. He'd have no reason to throw a game for money – he's flush."

"What about Ronnie?"

Garcia tapped on her keyboard. "Same thing. Clean. I mean, he's got student loans, but other than that, no debts, no payments, nothing."

He sighed. "Back to square one."

"Maybe not," Garcia replied. "Just out of curiosity, I ran Lena's name too and something came up."

"What?"

"Well, her name appears on a passenger manifest for Delta Airlines flight 861."

"You mean flight 9241," Reid corrected.

"No, I don't. Lena arrived at JFK on flight 861 at 7:38 on the morning of April 25th, almost five hours before the rest of the team. I checked her credit card records to make sure it was her. She bought the ticket a few weeks ago."

"Thanks." Reid hung up and relayed this news to Morgan.

"Why would she come to New York early?"

Reid shook his head. "No idea. She went to graduate school here, so maybe she wanted to visit friends, but I doubt it. I'd bet you anything that when we find out what she was doing, we find out why she was abducted."


	10. Sequence B

**_Standard disclaimers apply. As always, thank-you to my readers, reviewers and followers! Your imput is always appreciated. :) _**

O, that it were possible we might  
But hold some two days' conference with the dead!  
From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,  
I never shall know here.

- John Webster, _The Duchess of Malfi_, 1612-1613

_**INTERLUDE B**_

_The oak paneled walls of the library reading room rose up around him. Warm sunlight filtered in from high windows near the coffered ceiling. Each of the compartments, surrounded by more wood paneling and gilt embellishments, were painted with colored clouds: pink, blue, green and gold. The library was multi-tiered, and the still air smelled of dust, aging pages and binding glue. It was a smell that reminded him of his mother and the thick tomes she would bring home from the university for him when he was a child. He felt at once safe and disconcerted – whenever his mother was having an episode, she would hunker down in her bed and read. He loved the time they spent together, but it also meant she simply wasn't well. _

_Standing at the entrance to the room, he studied the two rows of heavy mahogany tables that ran its length, one to the left, the other to the right. It was empty, except for a solitary reader, sitting at one of the tables on the opposite side of the library: her. She looked up as he sat down, closing her book. _

_"I've missed you," she whispered. _

_"Yeah?" _

_She nodded. "It gets lonely, waiting to be found." Her voice, even at such a low volume, sounded raspy, overused. _

_"What's wrong?" He motioned to his throat. _

_Her hand flew to her own throat and she touched it gently, as if she had just noticed it existed. "It's hard to speak at night when you've been screaming all day." _

_"That's all I hear. Whenever I close my eyes. Every night it's the same." _

_"Not tonight." _

_"No. Not tonight." _

_She leaned back in her chair, a creak echoing through the room. She cocked her head, studying him. "You have questions." It was a statement, almost matter-of-fact. _

_"I do."_

_She waited, expectant. "Well?" _

_"Tell me where you are." _

_"It doesn't work like that. Even if I knew, I couldn't tell you." She stood and left the table, wandering towards the stacks. This was a reading room, so, apart from the shelves that lined the walls, and the low row of shelves that ran parallel to the walls, the room was filled with tables and chairs, all empty. "If you won't say it, I will," she threatened, running a hand along the shelves. _

_"Say what?" _

_She shrugged, and hoisted herself onto the shelves. She now towered over him and he noticed for the first time she was wearing heels: tall, sharp and slightly dangerous looking. "You want to know why I do what I do." _

_That was true, the thought had been nagging at him for some time. He opened his mouth to say something, but found that he had suddenly lost his voice. She smirked, and began to walk along the shelves, slowly, deliberately. _

_"You see, you don't want to like me, just like you don't want to like Paul, or Elliot or anyone else on the team. It's a lot easier to hate all of us because we're glorified jocks." She smiled down at him. "I suppose I can understand that, sort of." _

_"What makes you say that?" _

_She continued walking along the shelves, holding her arms perpendicular to her body, pretending to be practicing a high-wire act. "You don't consider my job a real job. Not like yours or your mother's, or even that of a lawyer or a doctor. You think it's easy – we play a game, it's not so challenging. And at the end of the day, it's just a game. You think I'm stupid or perhaps that I slept my way into my job." _

_"I don't think you're stupid," he murmured, wounded. _

_"But," she continued, "with an IQ like yours – with your abilities – you must think most people are stupid. Every day must be something of a struggle, trying to deal with people who just can't process information like you can." She paused, stopping to sit down on the bookshelf, tucking her feet underneath her knees. She cocked her head, considering him. "You're not alone, you know." _

_"How so?" he asked, feeling his cheeks flush. _

_She glanced away, thinking. "Most people look at me and think I'm an idiot – at least that's the way they treat me. I don't know what they see. I must have a look of the village idiot about me. And I'm certainly not beautiful enough to be given preferential treatment because of my looks – that answers that other question, but the way, the one you're afraid to ask. I don't have a big enough rack to be a cheerleader, so if I wanted to work in football, I had to go through other channels."_

_He had followed her down the aisle and stopped in front of one another. Sitting on the shelf, she was now at his eye level. "Why would you want to work with these people?" _

_"Why would you want to profile criminals for a living? The things you see, the absolute horror of the evil you face on a daily basis. I'm probably the tip of the preverbal iceberg." _

_"It's what I'm good at," he said softly. _

_"Ditto," she replied, her voice just as soft. "But what would I know? I'm just a figment of your imagination…or maybe I _am_ you. Who was it who said that everyone in your dream is a representation of yourself? Or maybe," she gripped his wrists and leaned forward, her lips just inches from his, "it's just wish fulfillment." _

_"Freud's beliefs on dream- and psycho- analysis are deeply flawed," he replied. _

_She straightened, the smile returning to her lips, but she didn't let go of his wrists. She shook her head and sighed. "Do you think you'll find me in time?" _

_"Do you?" _

_"There's a very famous line from _The Duchess of Malfi_-"_

_"_We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied which way please them_."_

_"That's the one. I think you'll find me if you're meant to." _

_"And if I'm not?" _

_She shrugged, but said nothing._

_"No. I don't accept that," he said. "You're not that fatalistic." _

_"Your profiling instincts tell you that?" _

_He nodded. "Yes."_

_She stared at him, her dark eyes taking him in and revealing nothing. Then she reached up and touched his cheek, her fingers lingering against his skin. "You have to find me. I don't know how much more of this I can handle." _

_"You've got to help me. You're stronger than this, I know it." _

_"All I know is that a picture is worth a thousand words. And a second picture? Well, that might just be worth a life." She dropped her hand from his face and for the briefest of moments, gripped his hand, slipping something into his palm. She slid off the shelf and began to walk away, towards the entrance to the reading room._

"_Wait," he said. "Don't go." _

_She turned and glanced over her shoulder at him, her lips slightly parted and an unreadable expression on her face. "How much do you want it?" she asked? _

_"What?" _

_"How much do you want it?" she repeated. "How much do you want the dilaudid?"_

_"What?" He peered at her, trying to gauge her response. She grinned at him. He sensed that she was entirely aware of what she was asking. "I've been clean for two years." _

_"How many more times are you going to have to hear me scream? What else does he have to do to me?" _

_He tightened his jaw at the question and spoke without thinking. "He'll have to kill you." _

_A shadow passed over her face. "I don't have much time." _

_"Then stay here, with me." _

_But she was already turning away, retreating into the next room. "I don't have much time left." She melted back into the darkness. _

_All that remained was the object that she had given him. He opened his hand. There, in his palm was a vial of dilaudid. In his other hand, though he hadn't realized it, was a syringe. He stared at the drug, feeling the strongest craving he had experienced since Riley Smith was murdered before his eyes. He tapped the needle against the top of the bottle. His final tap was delivered with a much stronger force and the needle slid through the top into the clear liquid below. _

_He began to fill the syringe. _

* * *

"Reid! Reid, man, wake up!"

Reid opened his eyes to find Morgan standing over him, concern written across his face and the ghost of irritation in his eyes. He could feel his heart pounding against his chest and his hands were knotted into tight fists. He glanced at them and opened them slowly, half expecting to find the vial of dilaudid still clutched in his fingers.

"You were having a nightmare," Morgan said unnecessarily. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Reid managed to reply, his mind trying to capture the last vestiges of the dream. He frowned. "Yeah. I'm fine."

* * *

**_In memory of Andrew. _**


	11. Lacrymosa

_**Standard disclaimers apply. Please pardon my poor Spanish. I haven't spoken it for years. **_

**_Thank-you to my readers, reviewers and followers! Your reviews are music to my inbox. :D_**

_**CHAPTER NINE**_

Thursday brought with it the storm that had been threatening New York for days. The torrential rains that drenched Manhattan created a damp chill that settled in the bones. The city seemed disheartened by winter's violent return; people trudged to work underneath black umbrellas, unconvinced that the weather would ever improve.

The team began filtering in to the precinct office early. No one had slept well and an unsettling send of doom had descended on the entire office. Lena had been missing for over one hundred hours and the chances of finding her alive had grown slim. When the entire team had arrived, clutching watery cups of police department coffee, Hotch cleared his throat.

"Okay, guys, someone's clearly trying to confuse us, so let's get back to basics. What do we know for certain?"

"Someone from the team drugged Lena, allowing the unsub to abduct her from her hotel room without much of a struggle," Prentiss said.

"And judging by the security video, it was either Ryan Hanson or Ronnie Taylor," J.J. added.

"Ronnie came up clean when Garcia did a background check," Reid said.

Prentiss was shaking her head. "And I just don't think it was him," she said. "He's just a kid."

"I want another crack at Ryan Hanson," Morgan said. "He's an egotistical son of a bitch, and but I think I can get to him."

"And then there's Elliot Mann," Reid murmured.

"Who isn't having an affair with Lena," Rossi said.

Hotch sat down at the head of the table. "We were thinking that Ronnie planted the story. But I suppose Ryan could have just as easily done it."

"Don't forget – Lena arrived in New York hours before the rest of the team," J.J. said.

Hotch glanced down the table at Reid. "Lena hid clues in her house. Do you think it's possible that she hid something here too?"

"Where?" Rossi asked. "The NYPD and the FBI tore her room apart. If there was anything there, they would have found it."

"Check-in at the Hilton New York begins at three p.m.," Reid said idly, staring at the wood of the conference table as he thought. "She wouldn't have had access to her room yet." He frowned. "She was hiding things in plain sight, like 'The Purloined Letter.' Hold on." His dream last night had set him to thinking about the pictures he had taken from Lena's house and he now produced him from his bag. The team watched him in silence as turned over the first one, the picture of Lena at the 2008 AFC Championship. He slid off the back of the frame. A series of numbers were written on the back of the picture.

Prentiss reached for picture. "These look like latitude and longitude coordinates," she said.

"We'll have Garcia run them," Hotch said. "What's in the other picture?"

Reid opened the back of the other frame. The back of the picture was empty, but a credit card was taped to the frame cardstock. Reid retrieved it. The name ELENA KOVALEVNA was inscribed on the front. He flipped it over; it was unsigned.

"Elena Kovalevna?" Morgan asked. "Who the hell is Elena Kovalevna?"

"I think it's Lena," Reid murmured. He dug the NFL almanac out of his bag. He had bookmarked the page that listed the Patriots' front-office staff and he now opened the book to this page. "See? She scratched out her name and wrote Elena Lopez y Kovalevna in its place. And that makes sense. 'Lena' is a Russian diminutive for the name 'Elena.' Spanish nomenclature traditionally includes both the father and the mother's name. The father's – Lopez – comes first and then the mothers – Kovalevna – and the two are joined by the article 'y' which means 'and' in Spanish. Traditionally, when Lena married she would have kept her father's name and added her husband's name, conjoining them with the word 'de,' which is what's called a nobiliary participle. But interestingly-"

"Okay, Reid, we get it," Morgan interrupted.

Reid blushed and lowered his gaze back to the book. "So say Elena Lopez y Kovalevna is her given name, she probably shortened it to Lena Lopez, which is much shorter and less of a mouthful. And since it's alliterative, it's probably easier to remember too. Did you know, the prefix –ez in Spanish means 'son of?" So the name Lopez means 'son of Lope.' It's the traditional surname of the Castilian province of Lugo…"

"Reid," Hotch said softly.

Rossi reached for the credit card. "I helped process a lot of the evidence from Lena's hotel room, including her billfold. She had credit cards in there, and they were all issued in the name Lena Lopez, not Elena Lopez or Elena Kovalevna or Lena Lopez y Kovalevna or anything like that."

"Clearly wherever she was using this card, she didn't want anyone to link it back to her, at least without doing some digging," Hotch said. "Okay, Dave, Morgan, you two bring Ryan Hanson back in and see if he'll give you anything. Reid, I want you to call up Garcia and find out what you can about this credit card and these coordinates. If they point to somewhere in the city, you and Prentiss should head over there next." He turned to J.J. "How do you feel about going to Hoboken with me?"

She nodded. "Okay."

The team dispersed. Prentiss picked up the loose photo and flipped it over. "You took this from her house."

"Mmhm." Reid busied himself with his cell phone, avoiding what he figured would be a disappointed or chastising look from Prentiss.

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why'd you take them?"

He shrugged. "They were practically the only pictures in the entire house. And given how deliberately she seemed to arrange everything, there had to be a reason she had left these two – and only these two – out."

Prentiss sighed. "She's lucky we sent you to look around her house. I would have thought she was anti-social, maybe that she had stripped away any memories of her husband from the house. I don't know if I would have made this connection."

"We just sort of think alike, I guess." Reid opened his phone and dialed Garcia.

She answered the phone on the first ring. "Good morning, my dear. What can I do for you today," she chirped.

"I'm going to put you on speakerphone," Reid said. "I've got a couple things for you to do."

"I'm waiting with baited breath."

"Okay, first, I've got longitude and latitude coordinates for you to triangulate."

"Shoot."

Prentiss read the numbers from the back of the picture and Garcia tapped them into her computer.

"Hmm." Garcia murmured. "It's a bank. In New York – the Financial District, of course."

"A bank?" Reid repeated.

"Yeah. Martinez International Holdings. It looks like it's an international bank that caters to Spanish citizens doing business in the city. It's based out of Grenada."

Reid and Prentiss exchanged glances. "That would make sense," Prentiss said.

"Do you have an account number that you want me to look up?"

Prentiss flipped over the picture and then flipped it again before checking the other photo. "There's nothing else on either of these pictures. Wouldn't you think that if she wanted us to find the bank, she'd leave the account number too?"

"I can hack into the server and try to find an account through the back door, but that'll take longer," Garcia offered.

"No. I…I think we've got it," Reid said. He returned to the NFL almanac. "Here. She wrote the number in the book."

"Well, give it to me," Garcia purred. Prentiss laughed and rolled her eyes.

"9027150388. I've got a password too, if you need it."

"Nah. I'm looking at it through the mainframe. Okay. It's a personal account, in the name of Raphael Lopez y Calderón. And the executor is Elena I.R. Lopez y Kovalevna. Spanish citizen, D.O.B. is 31 October 1980. That's Lena, right?"

"Yeah."

"Lena's a Spanish citizen? I thought she was born in the U.S.," Garcia said.

"She probably has at least dual citizenship – her parents were both foreign born," Prentiss said. "What kind of account is it? Savings? Checking?"

"It's an account for a vault box."

"When was it last accessed?" Reid asked.

More typing. "It looks like it was last opened on 25 April 2009 at nine-thirty in the morning. She must be an important client if they opened the bank for her on a Saturday morning."

"Garcia, can you send us the address of the bank?"

"It's already on its way to your phone. What else do you need?"

"We found another credit card that we think belonged to Lena. We need you to run the number and find out what she was using it for."

"Sure."

Reid read that number to Garcia. "It's in the name of Elena Kovalevna, by the way," he added.

"Well, that answers that question," Garcia said.

"What question is that?" Prentiss asked.

"If she had another card that wasn't among her affects, I still would have found it when I ran her numbers. But I ran them using her name and birth date, so this card wouldn't have come up." She paused, momentarily engrossed in her work. "It looks like she only used it once, at a place called The Personnel Office."

"I've never heard of it," Prentiss said and Reid nodded agreement.

"I'll see what I can find about it. I'll call you back soon."

"Thanks Garcia," Reid said. He hung up the phone. "Shall we?"

* * *

Martinez International Holdings was a sleek building cloaked in dark, reflective glass that rose nearly twenty stories above the Financial District. Compared to most of the surrounding businesses, it was actually a small building, and it seemed somewhat detached from the rest of the street, almost as if its architects intended to distinguish it as foreign-owned.

All the signs posted on and around the building were in Spanish and, Reid noticed, the bank's hours were listed in military time, the norm for European countries. Inside, the lobby was paneled in a dark stone, perhaps granite. A man in a dark suit approached the two agents as they entered.

"Buenos días, señor y señora. Puedo ayudar ustedes?"

Reid deferred to Prentiss. Ever since Elle had mocked his poor Spanish pronunciation years before, he tended to avoid speaking the language when possible.

Prentiss held up her badge and Reid followed suit. "Buenos días, señor. Soy Emily Prentiss, de la oficina federal de investigacíon y el es el doctor Reid. Habla usted ingles?"

"Sí, por supuesto. What can I do for you agents?" The bank representative spoke softly with a melodic accent.

"We're investigating the disappearance of one of your clients – Lena Lopez," Reid said. "We understand that she visited this bank on the morning of her disappearance and we're hoping that we might have access to the vault she visited."

The bank official nodded. "Please come with me. You will need to speak with Señor Valdez, our manager." He led them out of the lobby to the elevator bank. They rode the elevator to the twentieth floor in silence. When they arrived at Valdez's office, the man knocked on the door before sticking his head in the office and exchanging a few words in Spanish.

"Señor Valdez will see you."

"Gracias," Prentiss said, and the two agents entered the office. It was wood paneled, with a huge picture window that overlooked tiny Hanover Street and Exchange Plaza. Beyond the towering buildings was the East River and Brooklyn. The office was lined with bookshelves, filled with the dusty, leather-bound volumes that normally filled the offices of district attorneys and judges. They were, for the most part, also in Spanish.

Valdez was sitting at his desk, but he rose as Prentiss and Reid approached his desk. They introduced themselves and he shook their hands before offering the two leather seats opposite his desk to the agents.

"I am so sorry about Señora Lopez," Valdez said when they were settled in their respective chairs. "Her father was a loyal client for many years. I understand you're interested in seeing in her vault." Like the bank employee they had met before, he spoke with an accent, but his was not quite as strong, or perhaps it was lessened with an almost British pronunciation. Reid glanced around the room. Sure enough, a diploma from the Imperial College Business School hung on the wall.

"If we need to, we can come back with a warrant if we must, but we hoped it wouldn't come to that," Prentiss said. Reid noticed that her posture was just a little straighter than usual and her diction had altered almost imperceptibly. He wondered if this was the way she presented herself to her mother's State Department contacts.

"Thank-you," Valdez said. "Normally, we would require proper documentation for such a request, but Señora Lopez signed a waiver before she left on Saturday. She said someone from law enforcement might be here one day." If he found this information odd, he didn't show it. "I'm just waiting for verification from your bureau."

Within a few moments, the phone rang and Valdez excused himself, speaking briefly into the receiver. He must have been satisfied with whatever he heard, because he stood and led them from the room.

* * *

Valdez left the pair in a small room with a table and a few leather chairs and in a few moments, yet another employee arrived with a small bank box, large enough to hold European-sized copy paper and several inches deep.

"There is a key-pad on the top. You'll need the password," the employee said. "I'll be waiting outside for you."

Reid opened the almanac and read the password to Prentiss, who typed it into the key-pad. The top popped open and Prentiss reached inside, retrieving two manila envelopes. Both of them had Lena's name and address on them.

"Reid, check out the return address."

"The Personnel Office. This is what she ordered with that credit card."

Prentiss handed on of the envelopes to Reid and they opened them. "'Report on Raymond G. DeSalle,'" she read.

"Number 87," Reid noted.

"These are background reports. No wonder she used a secret credit card. She might have gotten fired if the team knew she was running such invasive background checks on players. Wow, look. There's even information on his stock portfolios and bank accounts. This is the stuff we use Garcia for."

"This one's on Ryan Hanover." Reid flipped though the pages and paused on the third page. "Oh wow."

"What?"

"Until February 2009, Ryan Hanover was deeply, deeply in debt."

Prentiss frowned. "So what happened?"

"Ryan deposited two million dollars into his savings account on February 5th. On the 6th, he wired $600,000 of it to an account with an offshore holding account in the Caribbean."

"February 5th? That's convenient."

Reid nodded. "I'll say. And the next week, he wired another million dollars to a Bank of America account based in Orlando, Florida."

Prentiss laughed curtly. "Guess who still maintains a house in his hometown, Orlando, Florida."

Reid's eyebrows flew. "You're kidding."

"Ray DeSalle. Receiver extraordinaire." Prentiss flipped through her report until she found a highlighted entry in the bank account listings. "Mr. DeSalle received a one million dollar payment on Monday February 9th into his savings account. You know what this looks like, Reid?"

He nodded. "It looks like Ryan received a two million dollar payout after the Super Bowl and he used it to pay off his debts and Ray DeSalle."

Prentiss reached for the report and perused it. "I wonder if these were gambling debts."

"If he used gambling to get out of debt, then it's probably safe to assume he got into debt through the same method," Reid said. "So, he approaches DeSalle and offers him half of the payout to throw the game."

"DeSalle does, and since the Patriots were such heavy favorites to win, betting against them would have earned Ryan a shit load of money."

Reid pointed to the papers. "It did. He came out with $400,000 in excess of his debts and DeSalle's fee." He looked Prentiss in the eye. "It was Ryan. Ryan drugged Lena's drink and gave her key to the unsub."

"No one would think twice about Ryan getting the key to Lena's room – they'd probably assume he needed to consult with her on projects or something. Or, he just said Lena asked him to get the key. No one would be looking for malicious intent."

"And no one would blink if Ryan got Lena a drink at the bar." Reid returned the papers to the envelope. "Come on. We've got to get back to the precinct before Morgan and Rossi start that interrogation."


	12. Requiem Aeternum

_**Standard Disclaimers Apply. **_

**_Hmmm... I should be reading, but this was just so much more interesting than sabermetrics... Anyone familiar with Hoboken knows there's no such place as Industry Way. I fudged the city a little bit, since I'm not all that familiar with Hoboken. Thank-you to my readers and reviewers! :)_**

_**CHAPTER TEN**_

Of the two agents, Prentiss was perhaps the more devious, by virtue of the fact that deviousness rarely occurred to Reid. Well, at least it didn't occur to him when he wasn't trying to hide a drug addiction. So it was Prentiss who suggested they spirit the reports out of the vault, leaving lined paper from one of Reid's notebooks in the envelopes. Once Prentiss had ensured that there were no security cameras watching them – apparently, in the vaults, clients valued their privacy – the reports were safely hidden in Reid's messenger bag. They made a quick exit then, and Reid didn't say a word, worried that his notoriously pathetic poker face would give them away.

They caught a cab uptown and Prentiss dialed Morgan's cell. Reid watched as the claustrophobic buildings of the Financial District abruptly gave way to the stark emptiness of Ground Zero. Tall fences cloaked in blue tarps surrounded the area and the can slowed to a crawl as traffic circumvented the construction. He only half listened to Prentiss' side of the conversation.

"…So those coordinates belonged to an international bank downtown," she was saying. "Yeah, we just left."

"She had some really interesting papers in her safety deposit box. You might want to hold off on your interview until we get back."

"Um hm… Well, take a break. We're on our way back now." She hung up and glanced at Reid. "They weren't getting anywhere with Ryan."

"No surprise there," Reid replied. "He's a classic narcissist. And if he truly had Lena kidnapped to cover up his misdeeds, he's probably something of a sociopath too."

Prentiss revisited the documents, which Reid had given her before she called Morgan. She shook her head. "This is incredible. If I wasn't looking at these numbers right now, I wouldn't believe us."

Reid nodded, but said nothing. He leaned his head against the cab door and watched the city whip by. Traffic wasn't too heavy at ten o'clock in the morning, so their progress along West Street was fairly unhampered. His silence surprised Prentiss and she looked up from the papers to appraise him.

"I think she's going to be okay," she said softly. "I just can feel it, women's intuition, you know?"

Reid sighed. "Just because you live doesn't automatically mean you're going to be okay."

Prentiss opened her mouth to respond, but Reid seemed to be processing something, so she waited.

"I mean, something like this – an abduction like this – it changes you, you know? Ever after, your life's divided by this huge wall – BK and AK: Before Kidnapping and After Kidnapping. It colors every relationship you currently have and it'll impact how you make new relationships in the future. You try to forget about it, but it's always going to be that elephant in the room. You don't want to talk about it, you don't want to think about it, and sometimes you can forget for a few hours, or a few days, or even a few weeks. But in the end, you always remember. It's almost like a death: every so often you can forget that person's gone, but you always remember that you'll never see them again." He shrugged. "Her life's never going to be the same."

Prentiss reached for Reid's hand and squeezed it. "You survived, Reid."

He smirked, rueful. "Yeah, with a drug addiction that I fight on a daily basis."

"But the point is, Reid, you're fighting it. You didn't give in. You're strong and I get the feeling she is too."

Reid nodded. "I hope you're right."

* * *

Morgan and Rossi were waiting for them when they returned to the precinct. "So, what'd you find that's so important," Morgan asked. He was getting a little ancy, a combination of Ryan's general attitude and Prentiss' request that they pause the interrogation.

"I…We think we have a motive," Reid said slowly and Prentiss presented the reports to the two agents, one to Rossi and one to Morgan. They flipped through the pages in silence for a moment.

Rossi grunted. "That's a lot of money our Mr. Hanover received in his account," he said at last. "And on an interesting date too."

Morgan glanced up and eyed Reid. "It looks like there might be something to your thrown Super Bowl theory, Kid."

"We think that Ryan was in debt, probably from gambling, and so conspired with Ray DeSalle to fix the game. He then bet against the Patriots at inflated odds, making a killing when they lost," Prentiss said. "He paid off DeSalle and the loan sharks, and still had a cool $400,000 to spare."

"Which would give him plenty of cash flow to pay off our unsub," Morgan said. "Good work, guys." He and Rossi returned to the interrogation room, Prentiss and Reid at their heels.

"You're back," Ryan said when the two agents entered the room. "Just when I was getting lonely." He shot Morgan a cocksure smirk.

Morgan leaned against the back of his chair, fixing Ryan with his piercing gaze. "Tell us about what happened on February 5th."

Something flashed across Ryan's face and for the briefest of seconds, he actually looked rattled. But he recovered, and his lips twisted into a tight smile. "February 5th? This year? That was the Thursday after the Super Bowl. I don't really remember anything happening on the 5th. Nothing out of the ordinary."

Morgan glanced over at Rossi. "See, if I had received two million dollars into my savings account, I'd remember it."

"What?" Ryan asked. Another flash of panic telegraphed across his face.

"Oh, you didn't know that you received a two million payout on the 5th? That's funny, because-" Morgan paused for dramatic effect, flipping through the report – "you wired $600,000 of it to the Caribbean the next day. You know, we at the federal government don't look so kindly on off-shore accounts."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ryan snapped.

"Careful, Morgan. He's getting defensive," Reid muttered to Prentiss.

"And then there's the million that you paid to Ray DeSalle," Morgan continued. "You've got to admit, Ryan, all of this looks very, very ugly."

"I didn't pay Ray DeSalle anything," Ryan growled. "Ray DeSalle makes a shit-load of money. A million dollars wouldn't get him to do anything."

Rossi pursed his lips and sat down, leaning forward to stare down Ryan. "We didn't say that you paid him that money to get him to do something. But now that you've mentioned it, you've sparked my curiosity."

Ryan pulled away, crossing his arms over his chest. He remained silent.

"A million dollars would buy a pretty large favor, Ryan," Morgan said.

More silence.

"Ryan, Lena traced your steps." Morgan slid the report across the table so Ryan could see it. "She figured out exactly what you had done and she left a trail for us. So now we know too. So you can help us, or we'll arrest you right now for kidnapping, conspiracy and fraud. But you're a gambling man. So maybe you want to hedge your bets."

"If she dies before we find her, I can guarantee that you'll go down for murder too," Rossi said. "It's an election year – the DA will make an example of you. You'll go away for the rest of your life."

Both agents paused for a moment, letting this information sink in. When Morgan spoke again, his voice was soft, almost gentle.

"Or, you can help us. Save yourself."

"Good," Reid whispered. "They're making this about him, not about Lena. If he's truly a sociopath, he won't care about her. It won't work to invoke his pity for her, because he doesn't have any. But he might just be enough of a coward to let the unsub hang."

"He tried to hang Elliot, I don't know why he wouldn't do it to the unsub too," Prentiss agreed.

The trio sat in silence for a few more minutes before Ryan broke. He ran his fingers through his hair. "I want a deal."

"We'll make sure the DA knows you cooperated."

Ryan eyed the two agents, but finally capitulated. "I thought I had gotten away with it," he said at lats.

"With what?" Rossi asked.

"The game. I thought I had actually succeeded in throwing it. It seemed like everything was falling into place. I mean, Ray performed beautifully during the first half. I almost didn't believe what I was seeing, because it was just so perfect. If I wasn't the person who told him to drop passes and miss catches, even I would have thought he was just having an off night. By half-time, I thought we had done it.

"But Elliot – Elliot fucking Mann – he started changing plays. He stopped throwing to Ray, even when he looked like the only person who was open. He started handing the ball off for rushing plays. It's like he knew. I couldn't believe it and I started panicking, thinking about all the money I was going to lose. I was unhinged, because I thought our plan was fail safe.

"Then, in the eleventh hour, everything fell into place. I mean, I couldn't have asked for a better call if I had paid off the ref too. He just handed the game to Seattle and I beat the spread. It felt…it felt like this was meant to be." He sighed. "Everything worked out. I paid Ray, I paid off my debts and I was a free man again. It was fucking perfect."

"But then Lena started getting suspicious. She was sniffing around, watching tape, watching _me_ like a hawk. I don't even know what raised red flags for her, but one day I came into the office and I _knew_ she knew. That was when I realized I had to do something about her. I had the rest of my winnings sitting in my bank account and I had two choices – I could pay her off or I could pay someone to take care of her. It occurred to me that if she were out of the picture, maybe I'd get her job. So I started looking for someone to help me.

"I advertised on line. And it worked. I found a guy and I planned everything. I wanted her away from the team, so I picked the draft. I got an extra key for her room by claiming she sent me to get it. I suggested we all go out for drinks after the first day, and I drugged her cocktail. Then it was up to my guy. He's the one who fucked up. I just wanted him to slip into the room and kill her. He wasn't supposed to do all this."

"What's his name?" Morgan asked, his voice low.

Ryan squirmed. "Samuel Erickson."

"Where's he keeping her?"

"I don't know."

"Don't," Rossi warned. "You know where she is. Just tell us where and end all of this."

Ryan's jaw worked back and forth. "He has a warehouse in near the Hoboken city limits. That's were he told me to send the money."

"What's the address?"

"35 Industry Way."

Reid was already on his cell, calling Hotch, who was out with Ortega, canvassing Hoboken. "Hotch, we have an address. Rossi and Morgan cracked Ryan. 35 Industry Way. We're on our way with reinforcements right now."

Rossi threw a pad and pen at Ryan as he and Morgan left the room. "Start writing."

* * *

Industry Way was just as Garcia had predicted, located a stone's throw from the rail yards. Ortega, Hoffman, Hotch and J.J. were waiting for the rest of the team when they pulled up in their SUVs.

"Ready?" Hotch asked, when the team had assembled, bullet-proof vests secured across their chests and weapons unsheathed.

"The guy's name is Samuel Erickson," Morgan said. "He might be armed."

"Be vigilant," Hotch instructed. "This could get very dicey very quickly."

The agents and the combined Hoboken and New York police forces dispersed through the labyrinthine passages of the warehouse. They found Samuel Erickson towards the back of the building, waiting for them. He held Lena up, a human shield, a knife to her throat.

"Come any closer and I'll slit her throat," he threatened, backing towards the wall.

The room was familiar, the same room from the pictures and the video and Reid felt a strange sense of disorientation upon seeing Lena in person for the first time. Her hair was matted and her skin had a dingy appearance to it, almost colorless. Her face was beyond wan, it was hollow and her terrified eyes looked out of sockets surrounded with dark bruising. She looked more like a ghoul that a living, breathing human being.

"Just put down the knife, Samuel," Hotch said, his voice taking on the familiar tone of someone reasoning with a madman. "No one has to get hurt."

"If you have the shot, take it," someone said – Reid didn't know who.

Samuel continued to back away, dragging Lena with him. Her body had gone almost completely limp. "I'm not letting her go."

"Samuel, drop the knife," Hotch repeated. "Just let her go."

Samuel tightened his grip on the knife and pushed it a little harder against Lena's throat. She gasped. The sound was enough to startle Samuel. He shifted his body ever so slightly and in that moment, Morgan capitalized on the movement, firing a single shot. Samuel tottered and fell forward, on top of Lena.

Reid exhaled and for a single second or two, the time seemed to stand still. The entire team froze, hoping the knife hadn't slipped.

* * *

Lena pushed out from underneath the body and crawled away, trying to find the mattress in one corner of the room. Samuel's blood was slicked on her face and she was disoriented. All she wanted was to lie down, so when she found the mattress, she crawled onto it and rolled herself into a tight fetal position, closing her eyes and praying that everything was over or that she was simply dead. There was chaos around her and she just wanted to shut it all out.

Reid was the first to move, and he tore off his bullet-proof vest, darting across the room to her side. He touched her gently, trying to help her up.

She flinched and pulled away. "Stop it!" she screamed. "Don't touch me. Get your filthy hands off of me, you monster!"

"Lena," he whispered. "Lena, I'm not him. It's over."

This voice was new, so completely different than the one she had heard for the last four and a half days. She opened her eyes slowly and sat up, trembling. "He was going to kill me," she said, her voice barely audible. "He was going to kill me," she repeated, terror cascading over her once more.

Before he truly knew what he was doing, Reid hugged her, grasping her small body to his. Her skin was cold and her body was wracked with tremors. This first human contact in days – she didn't believe her captor was human – overwhelmed her and she began to sob. She gripped his shirt, in case someone would try to take her away to hurt her again.

"It's over," Reid said again. "No one's ever going to hurt you again. I promise." He could feel her heart racing against his chest. "No one. I promise."  
At some point, a pair of EMTs arrived. They practically wrench Lena away from him, she was clinging to him so tightly. Reid followed them at a distance as they carried Lena to the ambulance.

"Is she going to be okay?"

"She's in shock," one of the EMTs told him. "We've got to get her to a hospital. We'll know for sure in a few hours."

Outside, Samuel Erickson's body was being loaded into another ambulance bound for the coroner's office. The BAU agents stood near their SUVs, waiting for their youngest member. Morgan wrapped an arm around Reid and led him to one of the idling cars. "Come on, Kid. Let's get you cleaned up."


	13. Lux Aeterna

**_Standard Disclaimers apply. _**

**_This chapter contains brief, but somewhat pointed spoilers for the fifth-season Sopranos episode, "Long Term Parking." If you're worried, you might want to skip a couple lines of dialogue. _**

**_Thank-you so much to all my readers and followers, and most especially, my reviewers: Ginger, safe. from. harm, Ania Nicole, TheLovethief, Evil Long Penname Having Individual End, angeleyes46, mykidmom, G. R. Jensen, paper. creations , Sue1313, and Dark Nemesis 7. I've appreciated all your comments and encouragement throughout this story. I know I probably wouldn't have completed it if I hadn't gotten such good feedback, so thank-you, thank-you, thank-you! I hope you enjoy this, the final chapter of "Requiem." :)_**

* * *

Well, disaster it strikes on a daily basis  
And I'm looking for wisdom in all the wrong places  
But still wanna laugh in disappointed faces  
And you can't help me  
I'm blinded by these

Heroes and Thieves at my door  
And I can't seem to tell them apart anymore  
Just when I figured it out  
Darling it's you I'm without

-Vanessa Carlton, "Heroes and Thieves"

_**CHAPTER 11**_

After a week, Lena, anxious and suffering from cabin fever, decided to get out of bed. There wasn't much to see outside of her room, not that she could go very far anyway, tethered as she was to an IV pole, but she made a habit of making a loop down the hall, checking on the nurses' station before she returned to her drab room. She had managed to sweet talk one of the doctors into providing her with a set of scrubs, a welcome relief from the rather embarrassing gowns patients usually wore.

Drab was, in fact, perhaps an uncharitable evaluation. Her room was one of the nicer ones, with large windows that looked over FDR Drive and the East River. She settled into one of the chairs near the window, watching the heavy rain outside. The first few days in the hospital had passed in a haze, almost like she was back with Samuel Erickson. When she woke up, it was often in panic, expecting to be tortured again. She had quivered whenever someone entered the room. More than anything, she had been disoriented and the steady stream of doctors, nurses and visitors that had flowed in and out of the room had done little to assuage her confusion.

By now, though, she was a little more collected and utterly bored. Wireless coverage was nonexistent, thanks to the sheen number of machines in the hospital and the hospital cable package didn't include the NFL Network, so she had to be content with trolling the papers for anything that might be useful. She longed to be back at work, to keep her mind from wandering to places she didn't want it to go.

When she wasn't roaming around her floor of the hospital or watching reruns of _Law and Order_, she read her treatment chart, curious about what her doctors thought about her. It didn't exactly fill her with encouragement.

_Pt. is altered, disoriented. Periodic dissociation. Refuses to meet with psych resident. Pt. may be at risk for depersonalization and/or derealization._

A sudden gale of wind buffeted the window with rain and brought Lena back to the present. She blinked. "You can come in," she said.

Reid, who had been standing in the doorway, arm raised to knock, froze. "How did you…?"

She smirked, glancing over her shoulder at him. "I saw your reflection in the window," she said, motioning towards it.

"Oh." Reid entered the room. "I don't know if you remember me…"

"I do. You're one of the FBI agents." She remembered clutching his shirt, listening to the rapid beating of his heart as she clung to him. She had concentrated on that sound so she wouldn't think of the horror around her. "But I don't remember your name," she added.

"Spencer Reid."

As he crossed the room, he noticed that the TV was on, though Lena didn't seem to be watching it. Apart from sci-fi, he didn't know that much about pop culture, but even he recognized Tony Soprano.

Lena followed his gaze to the TV. "It's the one where Adriana dies," she said, watching a few seconds of the program. "She's my favorite character. I feel bad for her – she finds herself in these situations she can't control and they destroy her. She's just too trusting."

"I've never seen _The Sopranos_," he replied. He motioned at the chair across a small table from Lena. "Can I sit down?" he asked.

She nodded, but turned back to the window. Reid studied the room. It was practically overflowing with bouquets of all shapes and sizes. "You have a lot of admirers," he said. "It looks like a florist in here."

"Or a funeral parlor." Lena surveyed the room. She carefully turned herself around, wincing as she moved, ignoring Reid's concerned expression. "Let's see… Some of these are from the team – that little one over there" – she pointed across the room to a small bouquet of roses and carnations – "is from Elliot. Small, lest someone think there was something to the _Post_ story. Oh, and speaking of the _Post_, that one there is a 'please don't sue us' arrangement. Notice the stuffed bear that came with it." She smiled. "Most of the other teams sent one, there's one from the league, uh, tokens from most of the major papers we work with…" She shrugged. "Most of them are political, rather than just being considerate."

"Politics, hmm?"

She nodded. "More or less."

"I brought you something," Reid said, reaching into his messenger bag. He pulled out an enormous book, which he passed to her.

"_2666_," she said.

"I figured you had a lot of time on your hands, so you might as well do something constructive."

Lena opened the book. "It's in Spanish!"

He smiled. "Well, if you can read it in the original, you should."

"Thank-you," she said softly. She raised her eyes to meet his gaze for the first time since he entered the room. Her dark eyes seemed even darker, ringed by deep circles and offset by unnaturally pale skin. He could make out the spidery lines of bruises tracing along her cheekbones, fading but not completely gone. Her face was drawn and she seemed visibly tired, justifiably so. A jaunty white bandage had been wrapped around her neck, protecting the knife wounds at her throat. She saw him looking at it and gently ran a finger along one edge.

He could sense that she was getting nervous with him sitting so near, watching her so closely. He wondered how long it would be before she was able to trust anyone again. He tried to imagine what it would be like if one of the BAU members had arranged for his kidnapping as someone from Lena's staff had organized hers, and couldn't. It would be devastating.

She raised her eyes to the TV and frowned, watching again. She pointed at it. "See, I'd like to think I'd know something was up if Tony Soprano sent one of his goons to pick me up. That always kind of unnerved me, that Adriana didn't see it coming." She paused. "But then again, I didn't realize that Ryan was going to use the draft as an excuse to get rid of me, so maybe I shouldn't complain."

Reid glanced up at the TV, then back at Lena. "I wondered about that."

"About why I let my guard down?" She shrugged. "I wish I had an answer. Ronnie gave me the drink, you know. I guess Ryan drugged it and then gave it to Ronnie to give to me." She shook her head. "I didn't even bat an eye, because I knew Ronnie was a pussy cat. I should have been more vigilant."

"You left a trail, though. You helped us more than you'll ever know."

Lena flipped off the TV and looked Reid straight in the eye. "If I had been a little more careful, you wouldn't have had to use my trail at all."

"Don't blame yourself. You're human, just like the rest of us."

She wrinkled her brow but didn't reply.

"You know what I don't understand?" he asked. "This whole mess started because of a _game_. Men were willing to kill you, all because of a stupid game. Suddenly the world seems a lot more shallow."

Lena shook her head. "You've got it all backwards. The game was simply incidental. This was all about money, not a game. Not that this should make you feel any less disconcerted about the human race." She set the book onto the table that separated her from Reid.

Reid leaned back in his chair and crossed his leg over his knee. "I don't think you would have said anything," he said.

She raised an eyebrow, issuing a challenge. "What makes you say that?"

"You told me yourself, when you left _The Great Gatsby_ for me. '_It had never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people – with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe._' I don't think you wanted to shake the faith of a nation of fans in the unofficial national sport."

Lena eyed him, evaluating him. "I hadn't decided, because I still wasn't completely sure. I wanted to be proved wrong, because if the game really had been thrown, it would confuse everything. It's one thing to play a bad game and lose, even if the game is as important as the Super Bowl. But it's a much different thing if someone predetermined the outcome. And I'm not even talking about the money we'd all lose if professional football imploded. There's something intoxicating about going to a game, something special, that has nothing to do with money or power or anything. It's about having a bratwurst and a beer with some buddies and watching your team beat up on your archrivals. It's about the _game_." She smiled. "There's an old football saying: 'on any given Sunday, anything can happen.' That's why we go to Gillette and Lambeau and Soldier Field in the snow and cold and sit there for three and half hours, freezing our asses off week after week. That's why the Super Bowl is the biggest championship of the year. Because anything can happen. The five-to-one favorites can go down to the underdogs. If you take that away from people…you're right: the world would be a lot more shallow. Or maybe a lot more cynical than any of us want to admit."

Reid sighed. "But we know better, don't we? We're stewards of secrets."

"I believe that some secrets have be kept. I mean, if everyone knew what you know about the utter evil humans are capable of, no one would ever go outside again. There are some things the world is better off not knowing."

* * *

_**One Week Later**_

Lena straightened the collar of her grey turtleneck sweater and appraised her reflection. She ran her hands down her waist, smoothing away any remaining wrinkles. Satisfied she looked appropriately collected, she gathered up her toiletries and vacated the small bathroom adjacent to her hospital room. She didn't want to linger in front of the mirror. The reflection staring back at her looked different. It was her eyes – they had changed, becoming hard, haunted. They had altered the entirety of her face and Lena didn't quite recognize herself anymore.

She dumped her toiletries into the duffle bag waiting for her on the hospital bed and sat down next to it, gingerly slipping a pair of heels on her feet. She was truly startled by how much everything still hurt. Since her miscarriage last year, she was used to her body failing her, as it had more often than she liked to admit. But the pain was a new sensation, one that she had hoped she could muscle through. It turned out it was harder to ignore than she had anticipated and she felt it in the most unexpected places. Her shoulders, for example, were still bothering her, a result, no doubt, of her arms being tied behind her back for four days. She had requested an MRI and planned to have the Patriots' team doctor check her out when she returned to Boston.

Lena dug her Blackberry out of her shoulder bag and tried to connect to the Internet again. Aiden had once told her that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result each time. She smirked at the memory and imagined what he'd say if he where here now. He'd be trying to talk her out of leaving the hospital so quickly, warning her of the dangers of going back to work too soon. She sighed and held the phone up, searching in vain for a signal.

"I don't think you're supposed to use those in here. They mess with the EKG machines."

"Oh," she gasped, dropping the Blackberry in her lap as she looked up. Spencer Reid stood in the doorway, blushing.

"I…I didn't mean to startle you," he muttered.

Lena ducked, slipping her phone back into her bag while she tried to compose herself. "Uh, that's okay," she said. "I just didn't hear you come in, that's all. Can I help you?"

"You're leaving?" he asked.

She nodded. "I'm desperate to get home."

"They released you?"

"I'm checking out AMA," she replied, avoiding his expression. "Don't try to talk me out of if. I've had half a dozen people in here already today trying to do the same thing."

"I won't try then. Anyway, I can't stay too long, I just wanted to return some things to you. I forgot to bring them last week." He reached into his bag and pulled out the books.

She shook her head. "You can keep those. I don't want to remember any of this, and they'll just serve to remind me. Plus, the new almanac will be out in a few months and I never liked _The Great Gatsby_ anyway. I just was using for that part about the World Series."

Reid glanced down at his bag again to hide his smile. "I knew it."

She frowned. "What's that?"

"Oh, nothing. Do you want your pictures back?" He held them out to her and she took them, pausing to consider them for a moment.

She gently ran her fingers along the portrait of Aiden before tucking it into her duffle bag. She sighed as she held up the picture of her and Elliot after the AFC Championship game. "Everything seemed a lot simpler that night," she remarked.

"How so?"

She shrugged. "We all were so confident that we were going to win. When we lost, we were like sheep without a shepherd. We flew back home the next day and we were so confused; we couldn't understand what happened. No, it was more than just not being able to comprehend it – we couldn't believe it." With another sigh, she added the second picture to her bag.

"And there's this too," Reid said, handing her an unsealed evidence bag.

Gingerly, Lena accepted it. "My necklace," she murmured. "I never thought I'd see this again after he took it."

"The chain was broken, so I got you a new one."

Lena slid her fingers into the bag and retrieved the necklace, holding it up to the light. "My first boyfriend gave me this. I was seventeen years old and I thought he was the sexiest thing I had ever seen in my entire life. He was Egyptian – obviously – and when he gave me this, he told me this wonderful story about how he wanted me protected and that's why he bought me this necklace…" She smiled ruefully. "It was all very romantic and I was smitten. But we didn't last very long and he ended up going back to Cairo after our freshman year anyway… But I kept the necklace. I liked the idea that I was being protected." She looked up and her dark eyes found his honey-brown ones. "Thank-you."

"Of course."

She stood and held the necklace back out to him. "Would you mind? I don't have all my mobility back yet." She turned her back to him and pulled her mass of long black hair over her shoulder and out of the way. Even in her heels, she was at least a head shorter than he was and once again he was struck by how small she was. He brushed away few stray strands of hair and fastened the necklace around her neck. She tucked it underneath the collar of the sweater.

"I wonder if it'll work better this time," she mused, checking her watch. "My car'll be here soon. I better go check out."

"I'll walk with you," Reid said.

"I didn't realize you'd still be in town," Lena said as they approached the nurse's station. "You don't live here do you? I thought someone said the FBI agents were from

Reid shrugged, thinking back to his last conversation with Hotch. Not long after they'd found Lena, when the team had returned to the Midtown North Precinct to debrief and collect their affects before returning to Quantico.

Hotch glanced over at Reid, packing up an evidence box. "Have you ever been in New York, apart from working a case?"

Reid shook his head. "I'm not so good at the tourist thing."

Hotch nodded. "Maybe you should take some time off, see the city."

"Sir?"

"A couple weeks off might do you some good, Reid. I think you might want to see the sights."

Reid looked at Lena and smiled. "I've had a little bit of vacation time."

"I see."

At the nurse's station, Reid stood a HYPAA-approved distance behind Lena, watching as she checked herself out.

"You realize that you do not have medical clearance to leave this hospital?" the on-duty nurse asked.

Lena nodded. "I realize that I'm checking out against medical advice," she said.

"Okay, Ms. Lopez, I'll need you to sign this form signifying that you're aware of your decision."

Lena took the form. "I also need the MRIs of my rotator cuffs sent to Dr. Scarborough in Boston. I have his address here."

The nurse handed Lena another form and she filled both of them out in silence. Lena handed them back and thanked her.

"Good luck, Ms. Lopez."

Reid was waiting for her near a large window overlooking the front entrance of the hospital and Lena joined him there. She glanced out of the window, ostensibly checking to see if her car arrived yet.

"The rain finally let up," she said unnecessarily. Indeed, the sun shone cheerily from a robin's egg-blue sky.

"Yeah," Reid agreed.

Lena lingered at the window, watching the traffic. "You know, I was born in this hospital," she said.

"Really?"

She nodded. "My parents were 'here on business,'" she said, making air quotes with her fingers. "That was the official story and, as far as the Soviet government knew, I was two months premature." She smirked. "The politics of ensuring your daughter American citizenship."

Reid rocked back and forth on his heels, feeling a sudden sense of panic washing over him. When he opened his mouth, he couldn't control what came out. "You know that human dissection was legalized in New York in 1854 in part on the efforts of NYU Medical School Faculty?"

Lena turned to him and frowned. "What?"

"Well…I just figured, since we're at the NYU Medical Center…"

She laughed. "That we are." She sighed and cleared her throat. "Listen, I should head downstairs."

"I'm going the same way. I could go with you."

"Okay."

Lena paused again in the medical center lobby, eyeing the band of journalists waiting outside the sliding doors. She seemed to transform before his very eyes, morphing from a woman still processing her trauma to the smart, charismatic, incredibly strong persona she maintained in the public eye. He felt as though there was now something sharp, almost flinty about her. She seemed to have projected a wall around herself, protecting herself. The only thing that remained unchanged were her eyes, which still reflected her distrust of everyone and everything.

She turned to him and extended a hand. "Dr. Reid," she said, suddenly stoic. "Thank-you for your work."

He shook her hand. When they had parted, she squared her shoulders and prepared herself for the press.

"Lena, wait." He reached out to touch her arm and she froze.

"Dr. Reid?"

Reid took a deep breath. "Look, Lena, I know what you're going through right now."

He could almost see her closing off to him. The smile melted from her face and she took a step back, as if the distance would somehow shield her. And he knew what was going through her mind, too. _How dare you even pretend what I'm going through? You have no idea what you're talking about_.

"A few years ago, I was kidnapped too," he said. "I'm still dealing with it each and every day. I know you want to forget that this ever happened and go back to living your life, but it'll never be the same. The one thing you can't do is bottle all this up and ignore it. That will only hurt more in the end than it will help you. Sometimes, it helps to talk to someone who really, truly understands what you're feeling." He handed her one of his business cards. "If you ever need anything, call me. If it's the middle of the night, a holiday, whatever, please, if you need someone to talk to, or just need someone to listen, I'm here." He shot her a shy smile. "I promise it'll get better, but it's hard."

Lena fingered the card, staring at it for a moment. She pulled her billfold out of her bag and slipped the card into it. She paused, thinking, and then opened the billfold again, grabbing one of her cards. She then grabbed a pen and scribbled a number on the back. "This is my Blackberry number," she said, handing Reid the card. "I always have it on, because of work." She rolled her eyes. "If you're ever in town give me a call."

"Lena?"

"Dr. Reid?"

"J.J. said the Patriots are playing the Redskins this October?"

She nodded, a slight smile tugging at her lips. "That's right."

"Well, maybe I'll see you in October."

The smile broke through. "Yeah, maybe I'll see you in October."

He smiled too and watched her walk through the sliding doors into the bright morning sunlight. She nodded in acknowledgement to the journalists before climbing into the idling town car waiting for her at the curb.

**~FINIS~**


End file.
